7 upvotes
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Mike Essex @blagmanThe expression “difficult second album” is a common way of summing up how hard artists find it to create their 2nd work. They put all their effort and energy in to their 1st work and then struggle to convert that in to gold again.
However I have to disagree with the sentiment. It’s actually far harder to create the first piece of work in something you’ve never done before. Whether that be music, writing, engineering, SEO, skateboarding or anything you’ve ever done for your work or personal life. To do something for the first time is tough.
That’s because it takes your entire life up until that point to create the first of something. All the lessons you learnt along the way and all the influences you’ve had they all form together to create that wonderful first of a project. That’s not to mention all the time it takes to create something new and the ideas you have to reject to find your way of solving that problem.
So I wanted to start this debate so people can share the first time they created something or learnt something so that other people can hopefully learn lessons when they try something for the first time.
I’ll start the ball rolling with a recent first:
I recently finished my first fiction novel, Tethered Twins, (http://www.amazon.com/Tethered-Twins-ebook/dp/B00AWX69S2/) and the main lessons that I learnt for anyone wanting to do something for the first time are:
· Plan out everything about your project before you start
· Start out with micro project first to learn your craft (e.g. with writing, make lots of blog posts before you attempt writing a book)
· Scrap bad ideas early so they don’t waste time later
· Ask people you trust to check your work and tell you everything that is bad about it
· Check everything as you go and allocate as much time for checking as you did for making the project
These won’t be true for every project but hopefully they can be helpful for other people in trying new things.
I’ll hand the gauntlet over to you now and ask: What project did you complete for the first time and what lessons did you learn from it?
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Mike Essex @blagman
I also put this question out to Google+ and had some excellent replies on there which I've included below:
Dan Barker:
"In the US they call it 'sophomore slump'. I think it less usually refers to the difficulty in shipping the second creation, and more usually the fact that the first acts as a benchmark &, if the first was really well received, it's often difficult to live up to hit that benchmark on the second try.
Really quite a nice idea, basically saying "we'll give this one the benefit of the doubt & assume it was a downward fluke, rather than assuming the first effort was an upward fluke"??"Richard Fergie:"I think the whole "difficult second album" thing is to do with regression to the mean.
For an unknown's first album to be a success it has to be really good otherwise we never hear about it. It could be that the artist is also really good and that the album is typical of their work. What is more likely is that the album is unusually good for what that artist is capable of (they played a blinder or whatever the music term for that is). The chance of them being unusually good on their second album is slim so their second album seems worse when in fact it is exactly what should be expected given the ability of the artist.
There is also some confirmation bias here; we're only going to hear first albums that are unusually good because the music industry is hard to break into.
Great question Mike!?"
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