The Terrible Follow-Up

I was reading today in the New York Times about the Arctic Monkeys, whose debut album

"Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not" (Domino), has been instantly -- and accurately -- hailed as a modern classic, even though it was only released a week ago. The British music magazine NME ranked it at No. 5 on a recent list of the greatest British albums ever.

And I thought, How do they follow up something like that? The singer and lyricist just turned twenty. It seems awfully young to peak. And then I thought of the old saying about bands, which also applies to writers: You have your whole life to write your first album, and one year to write the second. What if it took twenty years to write this album? Does that mean they won't be able to do another until they're forty?

The other day I grabbed issue #4 of Optic Nerve, an indie comic put out by Drawn & Quarterly. It's a graphic novella about a twenty-six year-old writer whose first novel was a decent success, but he finds when he's trying to write the follow-up, that he has nothing left to say.

"I'm still stuck on the new book," the main character, Martin, says. "Every idea I get is just some variation on the first book! I don't have enough real experiences to write about, and I can't do some made-up fiction thing... I don't really know how to make stuff up."

And that's just where I am, at least creatively. All of the three books I've started after The Cranberry Hush have been Hush-lite. My favorite author, John Steinbeck, said that there's only one book to a man, and that everything before it is practice. That's fine, but what happens if that one great book is the first one? What if the Arctic Monkeys said all they had to say with their first album?

The strategy of Martin, mentioned above, was to subconsciously (or maybe consciously) start creating drama in his life, in order to get material for a new book. It doesn't say how long it's going to take him to amass enough experience for that new book; all we know is that is costs him his relationship. I'm not about to go sabotaging my life. I just wish there was more I could wring out of the past.