He wrote it on a napkin

Ideas. On index cards, post-it notes, receipts, napkins. What to do with them next? I’ve always envied composers like Mozart and Schubert who seemed to be able to stream their ideas straight onto the page. I learned that Mozart did much of his composition in his head, working out harmonies and melodic lines while playing a game of skittles. When he found time to sit down, he’d transcribe from his head with little need for correction. Schubert was forever commandeering napkins in Viennese restaurants to capture the melodies that floated through his head, turning them quickly into songs and symphonies. Like Schubert, Ernest Hemingway—famous for his plain, compelling style of putting “one true sentence” after another—wasn’t above writing on a napkin. During one of those blurry, competitive lunches at the Algonquin Round Table, he wrote the six-word story (“For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.”) on a napkin. To win a bet.

A different medium, say a napkin, often stimulates the creative process. This may be true, but my problem tends to be getting from napkin fragments to a finished thought. Napkin writing, per se, is not my strength. Maybe that’s because I’m typically trying it at home, as an exercise, rather than in real life. I might have better luck sitting in a cozy restaurant with a fire in the hearth, eavesdropping on the argument underway at the next table. Or drinking a bathtub-gin martini while watching Zelda fiddle  with her strands of pearls. Instead I’m in my study, annoyed by the pen tearing at the napkin, with the ink smearing into instant illegibility.

It turns out that both Mozart and Schubert had a more complicated path to their finished products than it would seem. Mozart had become famous as a child prodigy. As an adult he was one of the first “freelance” composers, ever. (In other words, he wasn’t attached to a court or a church.) He needed to protect his image as a musician whose inspiration was near-divine. In reality, modern scholars say, Mozart might have gotten ideas while playing skittles or card games, but he would work out those ideas in more detail at the piano. Then he’d make draft scores containing the most important lines, such as melody and bass, later filling in the interior parts. Once he had a finished piece, he’d throw away the drafts. He didn’t need them anymore—and his public didn’t need to know.

Schubert did in fact write melody ideas on napkins. I sometimes wonder how he got these napkins—which would have been cloth, given that this was the early 1800s—out of the restaurant… Then he worked the ideas out at the piano, transferred them to staff paper, and made a couple of drafts. The early versions used different colors of ink for different voices. Once the ideas were sound and any errors were fixed, he copied the whole thing over.

Hemingway’s writing sessions began with pencils on paper. Then he typed from the handwritten drafts. Often it would take him several hours to produce just 500 words. Me, too!

It’s helpful to realize that even geniuses with genius napkin ideas have to work and rework them. I tick off process ideas to try. Mozart’s important lines first. Schubert’s different-colored inks. Hemingway’s beginnings in longhand. And I put a stack of napkins next to my laptop, just in case.