This is K.M. Wyland and you are listening to the Helping Writers Podcast.

I hope you enjoyed this week's episode,

The Six Challenges of Writing a Second Novel.

Writing your first story is a special experience. It brings many difficulties and challenges, but it also tends to carry itself and you along with a sense of passion, fun, and discovery. When we finish it, we may think, well, it can only get easier from here, right? But as many sophomore writers can attest, writing a

second novel is often an entirely different experience. It may be easier in some ways than the first, but in others it is often surprisingly and even bewilderingly more difficult.

In my own experience, it wasn't so much the chronological second novel that was a different

experience, but my second published novel. Third and fourth novels are also their own unique experiences, but that second novel can be a significant

hump for writers to get over, not merely in the terms of actually writing it and making it as good or better than the first one,

but perhaps even more particularly in the psychological aspects of the process.

A while back, reader Irada Seibetta wrote to me about this problem. I am an author of Soften Flowers and am now working on my second novel. My problem is that the second

novel seems more daunting and much harder to write. I don't get why this is. I have outlined

all the chapters, but it seems like the writing experience for my first novel is just so overwhelming and overpowering.

I hardly think I will manage to achieve the same level of sharpness with this second book.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Now I don't believe Irada is anywhere close to being alone in finding the sophomore novel to be more difficult.

I know this was certainly true for me in writing Behold the Dawn back in 2005.

And may I just say, holy mackerel, I cannot believe it's been that long. Part of the

struggle is, I think, what Irada termed the overwhelming and overpowering experience of the first novel in all the best ways.

We tend to have lived a bit longer with the first novel because at that point it's the only one.

We pour all the parts of ourselves into it.

And by the time we get to the second book,

we don't always feel as if we have as much to say. Plus, we're usually more educated about the process at that

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