An iconic scene from the movie Amadeus encapsulates what I call ‘The Amadeus Myth’. Picture this: a dimly lit room and the sound of a piano in the background. Composer Antonio Salieri is reading a musical score Mozart has left lying around in his apartment. His eyes widen in disbelief. This is what he says next:
Astounding! It was actually beyond belief. These were first and only drafts of music, but they showed no corrections of any kind. Not one. He had simply written down music already finished in his head! Page after page of it, as if he were just taking dictation. And music, finished as no music is ever finished. Displace one note and there would be diminishment. Displace one phrase and the structure would fall. It was clear to me that sound I had heard in the Archbishop’s palace had been no accident. Here again was the very voice of God!
Amadeus shows a childish, trickster Mozart who effortlessly produces inspired work. This is the Amadeus Myth, and it applies to writers too. How many movies have you seen where an author has a eureka moment and then produces their novel in a montage of typewriters clacking, pens scribbling, and paper flying, that lasts thirty seconds and ends with them clinking champagne glasses with their agent or publisher?
The media loves to romanticise creative people as tortured geniuses who produce their art entirely through sudden bursts of inspiration and spend the rest of their time drinking absinthe, self-harming, and being poisoned by jealous rivals. Genius, they tell us, is something the rest of us just have to stand back from in awe.
Let’s look at why this myth is so dangerous.
The Dangers of Believing the Amadeus Myth
While the Amadeus Myth might seem a harmless enough piece of media shorthand, believing it can have serious consequences. Let’s explore some of the dangers:
Writer’s Block
David Foster Wallace, author of Infinite Jest, and another writer often touted as a tortured genius, said the Amadeus myth causes writer’s block, though he called it the “masterpiece standard”. He described it like this:
You write a line. You delete it in shame. Type another line. Delete it. Soon, hours have flown by and you’re a failure sitting in front of a blank screen.
I think it’s probably even worse than this for a lot of writers—they haven’t got perfectly formed stories swirling around in their brain, begging to just be scribbled down, so they don’t even try to write, they just sit there, waiting for that moment of genius to happen. Stephen King criticises this attitude harshly though:
Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration. The rest of us just get up and go to work.
Imposter Syndrome
Imposter syndrome, the idea that you aren’t a proper writer, not like those geniuses, can be devastating to a writer’s confidence and lead to writer’s block. It’s something I’ve written about before in Overcoming Self-Doubt as a Writer.
Abandoning Projects
If a story doesn’t flow effortlessly, and you believe the Amadeus Myth, you’ll assume it’s not good enough. If you can’t write it down perfectly first time, then it must be worthless, right? So you abandon it.
And then, of course, it never gets finished, so you end up with dozens of half-finished projects, none of which you can show to anyone, so no one ever sees how good you are at writing. Then, of course, you never build your confidence or any kind of reputation, and so you never get anything published.
Abandoning projects is a sure route to failure as a writer.
Outcome Focus
Constantly striving for an unrealistic standard of effortless perfection is painful.
I’ve argued before that when writing, the only approach that works is not to look forward, not to look back, just enjoy the moment-to-moment excitement of the writing process itself. You can’t do that if you believe the Amadeus Myth because, just like David Foster Wallace, the masterpiece standard will stop you.
Failing to Improve
If you believe that writing is purely a matter of genius, of words, paragraphs, entire stories descending fully formed from paradise, then you’ll neglect what’s actually vital for an aspiring writer: learning and improving your craft, because what’s the point of reading a creative writing book or doing a creative writing course if writing is purely a matter of genius and inspiration?
But what if it’s true?
So, believing the Amadeus Myth is terrible for us non-geniuses, but what if some people do have an innate, indescribable, unteachable ability that sets them apart from the rest of us? What if they do write their stories down in one perfect draft that expresses their exquisite genius? Will we always be in their shadow, just as Salieri was in Mozart’s? Is the only rational course to give up because we don’t feel like we’re geniuses? Should we start drinking absinthe and plotting to murder Hillary Mantel?
Let’s see…
Debunking the Amadeus Myth
Luckily, a single perfect draft that appears from nowhere is not how famous authors write. Here’s three examples that debunk the myth:
Exhibit One: Mozart
So, first, the Amadeus Myth wasn’t even a thing for Mozart. Mozart was a prodigy, one of the greatest composers in the history and died at a relatively young age (35), but most of the rest of Amadeus is imaginary. Mozart sketched and drafted out his work just like everyone else, working long and hard on his compositions. And, spoiler alert, Salieri didn’t murder him either.
Exhibit Two: Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, romanticised for his adventurous lifestyle, and commonly described as a genius, famously said:
So much for the Amadeus Myth in Hemingway’s case, then.
Exhibit Three: George Saunders
George Saunders, winner of the Booker Prize for Lincoln in the Bardo and recipient of a MacArthur Genius Grant, said this:
There’s this eternal struggle between two viewpoints:
1) good writing is divine and comes in one felt swoop, vs:
2) good writing evolves, through revision, and is not a process of sudden, inspired, irrevocable statement but of incremental/iterative exploration.
I prefer and endorse the second viewpoint.
If George Saunders doesn’t believe the Amadeus Myth, I don’t know why we should.
The Amadeus Myth and First Drafts
These examples show that even writers celebrated for their talents don’t write their stories in a thirty-second-long montage after having had a blinding flash of inspiration. Their writing is as messy as ours, because in reality, all writing is a process of exploration and discovery where the effectiveness of a piece slowly improves.
That starts with the first draft, which, as Hemingway said, is going to be, shall we say, ‘less than stellar’. What we have to recognise as part of beating the Amadeus Myth is that a less than stellar first draft is a normal part of the story-writing process, a crucial part of its development. The last thing we need to do when we’re writing a first draft is start agonising over the fact it’s not perfect. Here’s what Ian Fleming said about writing the first draft of Casino Royale:
If you once look back, you are lost… I rewrote nothing… I obstinately closed my mind to self-mockery and “what will my friends say?” I savagely hammered on until the proud day when the last page was done.
So, that’s the secret. Don’t worry about how bad your first draft is. Embrace the fact it’s a mess. That mess is the rough diamond you’ll edit later, polishing it until it’s brilliant. Which brings me on to what genius really is.
A More Useful Definition of Genius
This is George Saunders again, talking about his revision process:
I just have the experience that an early [draft of a] story of mine will be kind of facile… And then over the many, many drafts, the thing actually changes and becomes fairer, and funnier, and smarter, and so on… So the whole thing for me is to be reading my work as if I didn’t write it. As if I just found it on a bus seat or something… in a good writing day, I might get through a seven-page story two or three times in that spirit. And I’ll make the changes, put them in, print it out, read it again… for many, many days, and weeks, and months… And the funny thing is over time, it does kind of stabilize into something that you can read over and over with mostly positive feelings.
So certified genius George Saunders says the first drafts of all his stories are “facile” and they only get as good as they are (which is very, very good indeed) because he revises them hundreds of times over a period of months.
Similarly, Roald Dahl, one of the all-time bestselling children’s story writers, said:
By the time I am nearing the end of a story, the first part will have been reread and altered and corrected at least one hundred and fifty times. I am suspicious of both facility and speed. Good writing is essentially rewriting. I am positive of this.
Which brings me on to a definition of genius that’s a lot more useful:
So, it seems that the thing to do if you want to write a masterpiece is to get something, anything down and then read through it over and over again, making big changes to start with and hopefully smaller and smaller changes as you go on, until it’s finished after dozens or even hundreds of drafts.
This is what real genius is.
But, but…
What, you don’t want to revise your stories dozens or even hundreds of times?
Okay, so, maybe the reason George Saunders is regarded as a genius and Roald Dahl sold 300 million copies of his stories is because they tried harder. What do you think?
I mean, that’s actually encouraging, isn’t it? Writing a brilliant story isn’t impossible because you don’t have that impossible-to-replicate inspiration. All you have to do is try harder.
The Amadeus Myth: Conclusion
I hope I’ve shown that the secret to writing isn’t effortless genius, it’s turning imperfect first drafts into something better through persistence and hard work. So here’s my advice: turn your inner Salieri off and start writing. Your messy, imperfect, beautiful first draft is waiting to be born.
The Amadeus Myth: Things to Do
Here are some practical things you can do to combat the Amadeus Myth:
- Understand that effortless writing isn’t a thing.
- Don’t wait for that elusive eureka moment. Set a daily writing goal, even if it’s a hundred words.
- Don’t look back. Don’t look forward. Just write. Enjoy the process.
- Don’t worry about how bad your first draft is—just finish it.
- Complete a story you gave up on part way through because you thought it wasn’t good enough.
- Write a new draft of a story you finished but thought didn’t quite work.
- Focus on learning and improving.
- Read a book about creative writing.
- Do a creative writing course.
- Join a writing group.
- Get feedback on your story.
- Celebrate your writing achievements, no matter how small, to combat imposter syndrome.
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