There is nothing like success to make you unsure of yourself. Perhaps the greatest obstacle to making a go of a project is the process of doing something so well that you never do anything else for fear of failure. If a writer makes it to the best-seller list the first time out, every novel to follow will be judged by the first. If a baseball player gets a home run the first time at bat, every time he comes up to the plate, the stands will be judging the performance in light of that first hit. If a movie director's first film is a box office smash, it's going to be hard to produce a second film that will do as well.

It sounds crazy, but it is true. It is safer and more assuring to work your way up than being a star from the momen…