You read my mind. Harper Lee seems a perfect case study, leading me to ponder the difference between procrastination and the "one-hit" wonder phenomenon.

While some writers crank out books in an ongoing, uninterrupted, frenzied biblioblitz (Joyce Carol Oates), others seem to have a much longer gestation period. This is not necessarily attributable to procrastination, however. They may have other careers that take them away from their craft. Wallace Stevens comes to mind, an insurance agent by day, poet by night, whose 13-year hiatus from publishing between Harmonium (1923) and Ideas of Order (1936) still has Helen Vendler crying when she teaches her modernism course at Harvard.