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The disappointing second novel is measured against the brilliant first novel - often no novel lives up to the first. Literary improvement seems like an unfair expectation.

Second novels are bears. As are other people's expectations for them. I think taking the time you need with the second book is key. Writers spend years and years on their first novels and then are often expected to turn out a second at warp speed, a recipe for failure.

Writing a novel is not at all like riding a bike. Writing a novel is like having to redesign a bike, based on laws of physics that you don't understand, in a new universe. So having written one novel does nothing for you when you have to write the second one.

I've discovered as an author that the process of writing a novel becomes harder over time, not easier. I used to think the reverse must be true, that it would be like any task, and the more I practiced, the more adept I'd become.

I'm not the most prolific writer in the world, and, sadly, writing a novel involves a lot of effort.

If one book's done this well, you want to write another one that does just as well. There's that horror of the second novel that doesn't match up.

A lot of people have trouble with their second novel - the dreaded sophomore jinx. I wrote three books in between the two novels, and they just weren't very good.

I remain convinced that the most valuable use of time for a newly published author is to write a second book that's even better than the first, and a third that's better than the second, and on and on.

I was aware that there is an expectation that writers inevitably falter at this stage, that they fail to live up to the promise of their first successful book, that the next book never pleases the way the prior one did. It simply increased my sense of being challenged.

I think what happens to young writers is that they use up every life experience that they have had up to that point for their first novel. Then you have to come up with something for the second novel, but you really don't have anything to say.