The "ten-year rule" suggests that it takes about 10 years of preparation to reach "expert" status. How long does it take, however, for someone to reach a level of creative greatness? Through an analysis of 215 contemporary fiction writers, we found that these writers took an average of 10.6 years between their first publication and their best publication, although there was a high degree of variability. This tentatively suggests that at least for modern fiction writers, a second phase after the first ten years may be crucial for achieving eminence. We dis- cuss these findings in the context of results found in other domains of creativity, along with limitations and future directions. Sometimes big questions can be addressed with fairly straight- forward studies. The image of a writer as a genius driven by a muse is certainly an established stereotype (and one often embraced by writers themselves; see Piirto, 1998), and encour- ages a spiritual view of writing. Consider, for example, the writer Russell Hoban's observation that "the novelist is a shaman who is . . . offering his experience for the use of the rest of the tribe" (quoted in Winokur, 1990). Is writing indeed a mystical act, with famed novelists born with a silver pen in their hand? Even though the writers themselves may still see this as the case, psychological research suggests that the highest levels of creativity might not be as mystical as once thought. The Creative Cognition approach adapted the methodology and concepts of cognitive psychology with the aim of advancing the scientific understanding of creativity (Ward, Finke, & Smith, 1999). In so doing, research from this approach has demon- strated that creative performers seem to possess the same pro- cesses (i.e., retrieval of existing structures from memory, simple