Mozartians vs. Beethovians

The writing process. Now there's a topic. We all go about writing in different ways and as part of this we process the information that we are writing about in different ways. Some of us process it in our heads, but many, or perhaps most, of us have to process it in writing. This is what differentiates one-draft and multi-draft writers.

Here is Muriel Harris:

By one-draft writers I mean those writers who construct their plans and the pre-texts that carry out those plans as well as do all or most of the revision of those plans and pre-texts mentally, before transcribing. They do little or no retranscribing. True one-drafters have not arrived at this developmentally or as a result of training in writing, and they should not be confused with other writers who -- driven by deadlines, lack of motivation, insufficient experience with writing, or anxieties about "getting it right the first time" -- do little or no scratching out of what they have written.

Multi-drafters, on the other hand, need to interact with their transcriptions in order to revise. Independent of how much planning they do or pre-text they compose, they continue to revise after they have transcribed words onto paper. Again, true multi-drafters have not reached this stage developmentally or as a result of any intervention by teachers.

I find this explanation helpful, but I rather prefer Stephen Spender's terms. Janet Emig explains them well:

Spender divides artists, after their formidable ancestors, into Mozartians and Beethovians. The Mozartian is one who can instantaneously arrange encounters with his unconscious; he is one in whom the creative self leads a constant and uninterrupted life of its own, serene to surface disturbances, oblivious of full upper activity... The Mozartian can "plunge the greatest depths of his own experience by the tremendous effort of a moment" and surface every time with a finished pearl - a Cosi Fan Tutte, a Piano Concerto in C Major.

The Beethovian, on the other hand, is the agonizer, the evolutionizer. Scholars study his first notes to a quartet or a symphony, as Spender points out, are astounded by their embryonic clumsiness. The creative self in a Beethovian is not a plummeting diver, but a plodding miner who seems at time to scoop south with his bare hands. To change the metaphor, for the Beethovian, composing is not unlike eating an artichoke - pricks and inadequate rewards in our tedious leaf-by-leaf spiraling toward the delectable heart. I say our for how many of us can claim ourselves Mozartians?

To those who can compose completely in their minds and whip together an excellent first draft, bravo. As for the rest of us, those of us who are true Beethovians and those of us who fall somewhere in between, I say we embrace our multi-drafting tendencies. Make it work for us. Leave ourselves the time to work through draft after draft until we reach the heart of the artichoke.