Is your aim to write one novel, or several, or dozens? Whichever you choose, it can be exhausting. Not the writing, perhaps, but reactions. Consider the one-novel option:
Some single novels seem to last forever, and the author sees no need to write another. Margaret Mitchell took 11 years (1926-1937) and a ton of A4 to produce Gone with the Wind. The heroine is remarkable, partly for her 17-inch waist, that today we might call size 0. Responding to fans and journalists kept Mitchell from her bed. Apparently 30 million sold, and counting.
Kathleen Winsor took five years, swotting roughly one history on Restoration London a week, to write 13,000 pages of 'Forever Amber' (1939-44). Equal to five books a year, cut by US publishers to 972 pages of imminent sexual action. Gollancz spurned British rights, calling it trash, despite 'knowing it would sell a million'. Actually, it sold five million. Plus film, naturally. The power point is when normally gorgeous Amber nurses hero back from the plague.
Now Winsor was naturally a single novelist. Ultimately she published five more novels, and they all failed. Likewise four marriages to celebrities. Should have followed Mitchell’s example, receiving fans and hacks full time.
Harper Lee wrote only 'To Kill a Mocking Bird (1960) (made into a film with Gregory Peck in 1962) and was shy of fans and hacks. The book’s said to have passed 30 million, its author covered in honours. She twice tried another novel, but gave up half way, dissatisfied, evidently accepting herself as a one-novel accident.
The sale of J. D. Salinger’s only novel, 'The Catcher in the Rye (1951) hovers around 70 million. Straight off, young girls were persuading philistine lads to read it. Salinger was soured by wartime experience, harassed by church and state, kept film - makers and biographers at bay, withdrew into his own ivory tower.
Saddest one-novel story is John Kennedy Toole’s. Shattered by rejections of his satirical Confederacy of Dunces, he took his own life at 32 in 1969. His mother got it published in 1980, helped by (several-novel author) Walker Percy. It won the Pulitzer, sold in seven figures. Was Toole a fated one-novel writer? Well, his other fiction The Neon Bible failed as novel (1989) and film — perhaps hardly surprising, given he was 16 when he wrote it.
Best wishes, Alex
About Alex: Guest blogger Alex Hamilton is an award-winning travel writer. He contributes articles ‘The growth of travel guidebooks’ and ‘One hundred years of fiction bestsellers’ for the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook. Click here to buy the 2011 edition at a discount »
Alex,
That was a great retrospect on author history. There is much to be learned from the careers of those notable single novel-authors, especially when comparing them to many-novel authors. I wonder what kept single-novel authors from expanding successfully. I know great ideas can be hard to come by; did they lack the ability to conceive more? Sometimes, accomplishing removes the enthusiasm to do more of the same; did they lose the drive? When you go through an experience you know its ins and outs and in the end, it may not be what you imagined like. Were they deterred by hard and distasteful experiences? Or were they simply content in their accomplishment, knowing they could never achieve better than what they already did? The answer probably lies with all of the above, but one thing is for certain. One good work is all it takes to inspire others to continue their legacy. Case in point: Alexandra Ripley, who was chosen by Mitchell’s estate to pen Scarlett, the sequel to Gone With The Wind which was also later adapted to film featuring Joan Whalley-Kilmer and Timothy Dalton in place of Vivian Leigh and Clark Gable respectively.