One hit wonder

I have a new blog.  A fancy new one created as a space to write about my writing.  It has a beautiful design and is sitting there (over at Wordpress) all ready to be posted upon.  However, Wordpress never seems to like me much and gives me nothing but endless problems. And I have a few things to say about my writing of late.....so, here I am back at "From My Catholic Perspective" where I thought I'd never be again...

To talk about one hit wonders.

One hit wonders-- those fabulous chart topping songs that everyone loves and everyone sings.  Those amazingly successful, incredibly popular songs by artists that no one has heard of before and no one ever hears from again.  

I'm sure there has never been a musician who has aspired to become a one hit wonder. Sure, it is better than a no-hit failure....... but not much.

I wrote a novel a few years ago.  It was great.   Writing it was great.  Editing it was great.  Publishing it was great and reviews of it were, for the most part, pretty great.  So I wrote another novel and then another.   

My second novel was terrible.  So terrible, in fact, that I never finished the job of editing it.  A few thousand words into my read-through of it told me, it was not worth pursuing further.  

My third novel was much more fun to write than the second.  The story seemed better, the plot clearer, the characters better developed.  However- the editing process feels eeriely familiar to story #2.  There are so many things that need to be fixed and I am not sure what the best way to go about fixing it all is.  Should I re-write the entire first half of the book?  Should I change the basic premise of the story?  Should I make my characters totally different?  Should I keep going with the story as it is and just clean up the grammatical errors, not worrying that parts of it just don't sit well with me?

As I have pondered all these questions, I have also wondered- Am I the writing equivalent of a one hit wonder?  Maybe my first novel was a fluke thing.  Maybe I can't follow it up.  Maybe I am not all that talented as a writer.

And if all these things are true-- Can I live with hanging up my writer's hat, so to speak, and just being content to have had that one success? Is it okay to give up one's dreams after having just a tiny taste of those dreams coming true?!?!??!?!?