The Craft of Writing

Today, my daughter competed in a musical composition competition and, for the first time, I was able to appreciate the great similarities between writing a piece of music and writing any other text.

Entrants were required to compose an original musical score for an instrument or instruments of their choice. Younger entrants, like my daughter, wrote a piece for the piano, while older and more experienced entrants wrote much more complicated scores which included various combinations of flute, violin, trumpet, guitar, piano, and vocals.

At one point, the adjudicator spoke to us about the composing process, using the examples of Mozart and Beethoven to explain the very different approaches writers use to compose their music. While Mozart was able to visualise the music score in his mind and transcribe it precisely onto paper, Beethoven's method was very different. His process was much more organic, as he wrote and discarded, wrote and discarded, until he had written something with which he was finally happy. Patently, though, each of these approaches to writing worked! Imagine a world without the opportunity to have enjoyed their music.

The adjudicator's point was that each person writes a piece of music differently, which is exactly the same for writers of other texts. I know people who are able to write an essay from start to finish in a single sitting (often under a tight timeline!), others who brainstorm, plan meticulously, draft, edit, redraft and refine before completing a final polished copy, and then there are those who write the conclusion first, the body next and the introduction last! If the finished product is of great quality, who am I to judge which process is best? Some are able to envisage their finished piece of writing before a word has been committed to paper or computer, just like Mozart. Others prefer to cull and refine as part of the writing process, with a scrapheap of ideas and writing to show for their trouble, similar to Beethoven.

I don't know why I've never made the connection between writing music and writing words before today, but now that it's happened, it's added another dimension to my ideas about writing. Writers of prose and poetry draw inspiration from nature, life, society and beauty, as do composers of music. Today's composers of the future used names for their pieces including 'Fusion', 'Multiculturalism', 'Velvet Rose', 'The Circus' and 'Cleopatra's Gig', testament to our world and its many facets.

Writing is a craft, it is a creative process, it is a journey and it is a gift. Treasuring the ability to write and the opportunity to appreciate the writing of others is a privilege, one for which I am very grateful. To all of the composers whose musical writing I enjoyed today, your efforts have caused me to stop and appreciate the craft of writing on a wider scale, and for that, I say thank you.

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