Finding Inspiration

I just finished watching Amadeus with my mother and my son. It's quite the movie, well-deserving of its reputation. I've seen it before, but it's been quite a while. Mozart is a fascinating subject of study; a musical genius without equal, dying at the age of 35, and buried in a mass grave because he was so poor when he died. How does that combination work, exactly?

Mozart, as portrayed in the movie, had entire operas, concertos, and everything else perfectly formed in his head. As Salieri, the narrator and Mozart's rival in the movie, put it: "It was as if he were taking dictation." He simply wrote down what was already there, no mistakes, no corrections, no edits. The movie does take liberties, of course; Mozart didn't actually write a concerto at the age of four; his first compositions were written at the age of five, and they were just simple keyboard minuets and such. He actually wrote his first symphony before his first concerto; Symphony No. 1 in E-flat was written at the age of eight; the first piano concerto and opera were both written at age eleven. I'm still trying to get my eleven-year-old to make his bed in the morning, and this guy was writing concertos and operas.

But it's that 'taking dictation' part that interests me. After all, that's what writers do, essentially. Sure, we take time to think about what we're writing before we actually write it, but really, once it's there, we just write it out. We usually have more corrections and mistakes to worry about than Mozart, of course. But the principle is the same; write the story. It's usually pretty much done at that point. There usually isn't much editing that needs to be done, other than typos and such. Rewriting is just our way of telling the subconscious mind that it didn't do its job properly when coming up with the story in the first place. Why insult the most creative part of your mind like that?

So, while we'll never even come close to matching Mozart's level of genius, we can at least try to match his work ethic. And that means, time to get back to writing.

While you're waiting for my next masterpiece to spring, fully-formed from my forehead like Aphrodite, take a look at my latest murder mystery, Best Served Cold, available now on all Amazon platforms.