"Before reading his book, I too had the idealized notion of "brilliant idea, years of writing one paper about it". The reality isn't quite as fantastic, but I appreciate learning the truth over belated disillusionment."

I don't know whether that's the convention in your field (or with your advisor), so I don't want to make any generalizations. It's certainly possible to graduate with one big idea -> single paper, but that's just not what I ended up doing.