C. J. Cherry, OSC, Zelazney (while he lived), etc, all seem to have produced a lot more novels than their mainstream counterparts (Bellow, Updike, Irving). However, mainstream crowd tends (Not counting Stephen King - he's a special case) to squeeze them out more sparingly than SF/F luminaries. And I have to say, the high level of SF/F productivity seems to hurt the quality of their writing. C. J. Cherryh used to be one of my favorite, but she hasn't produced anything of real interest in years. OSC hasn't grabbed me with anything since "Speaker for the Dead". Zelazny never recovered from his "Amber" series.

Don't get me wrong here. I think all the above still write beautifully. However, it's as though their stories become derivitive of their earlier successes. There's a spark missing that I missed in their earlier works.

I think the same variation can be seen in writing.

Yes, some series' begin to feel tired after a while (Salvatore's Drizzt books and Jordan's Wheel of Time are the first things I think of). The characters I wanted to care about slowly turned into cardboard and the characters I did care about weren't strong enough to overcome the writer's exhaustion. I never want to be in a position where I have to write in a world I can't stand anymore just because I need to pay the bills.

However, sometimes it has nothing to do with being tired of a story. Whedon loved the world he created in Firefly, and yet everything he created in that world after Fox cancelled the series has, imo, fallen flat, in spite of his passion for the milieu. Serenity was decent, but it felt like a condensed second season of Firefly.

I think it can also be a perception of the reader. I read Small Gods by Terry Prachett and found I couldn't read anything else by him. Nothing else in Discworld resonated nearly as much with me as Small Gods. So, I'm currently of the opinion that Small Gods is the best he's written even though I'm pretty sure I'm wrong.

My point with all this rambling is that I don't know the answer and I'm terrified the same thing is going to happen to me. I've noticed I enjoy romance in a story and we all know how tired that can get. And yet, if the story's good, I don't care how many times I've seen the formula; perhaps as long as characters are good and drive the plot, the rest doesn't really matter.

I could read any of my favorite books a thousand times (with some, I've probably reached that mark). I could read a thousand books by any one of my favorite authors (unfortunately for me, King isn't one of my favorite authors, though I don't despise him or anything).

Some litereurs have assigned a lot of importance to the difference between a person who can read the same great book over and over and never get tired of it and the kind of person who always seeks novelty. I personally think that it's a darn good thing that most readers want novelty more than greatness, because I do hope to eventually get published and, as the word itself suggests, novels sell because they're something new. I like being able to read well written texts without getting tired of them, but I also like discovering new stories.

As for whether the economic need to produce can smother the creative spark, I think that it certainly can, but usually it doesn't. If a writer has a creative spark and can nurture it through the long trials of fighting to have it acknowledged, that spark can usually survive a bit of pampering.

Often as not, one-shot writers like Harper Lee or J. D. Salinger or Margaret Mitchell had one book so huge a success that there was no pressing need to write another one to make a living. (Yeah, I know Salinger published a couple of other things, but only one thing really counted.)

Unless, of course, you know all of the ins-and-outs of the publishing industry as well as all of the ins-and-outs of the grants writers can receive.

And then I'll take up knitting.

Don't confuse the books written BASED on Clancy's works (Spec Ops, etc).

There are a few things you can learn from Stephen King. First, he had five or six novels in the drawer before he sold CARRIE. Second, he didn't stop writing while waiting for a response from editors.

Lets say it takes two years for your novel to reach all of its potential markets, publishers and agents alike. By the time that one novel has reached all of its potential marktes you should have written at least two more and have plans for a third.

But maybe you're all ready doing that and I'm just misreading your post. Either way, it seems to me you're worrying about things that don't concern you now. To do that is death to your creative life; I know, I've done it too.

Just write and write and write because in the end that's the only thing you can control.

Of course, Knight Of Shadows lit the fires of my 18 year old imagination and when I got my hands on it, I devoured it in one 24 hour period.

But Zelanzy did drop the ball IMO in the tenth book, Prince of Chaos.