Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
He was lucky in the sense that he didn't spend years getting a dozen rejections, like Rowling (and others), before finding a publisher willing to publish his book. *That* connection is pretty much the luck of the draw and has nothing to do with the quality of the book or his talent.
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Well, yes and no. The classic example is the 150 rejections A Wrinkle in Time got before a small publisher decided to "take a chance" on it. The problem with Rowling and Wrinkle in Time and other stories like those is that they were clearly books that were different from the norm. They didn't fit the typical genre boundaries and styles of the time. Turow aims right down the middle of a genre everybody knows: the mystery/thriller. He has his own spin on it, but his book did not create a new category. That he aimed down the middle and did so well is a testament to his skills and abilities, but that is all.
When I was in school, the theory was that A students made the worst teachers because "they didn't have to struggle and work at it like the C students did." Which is complete and utter nonsense. Some students work like mad to get As, and some students are just lazy and get Cs. The end result does not tell us how hard they worked to get there. Turow made his own luck. Only losers assume the winners were lucky.