tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8839584506001378073.post3964279259137907561..comments2023-10-30T22:39:14.941+11:00Comments on Jonathan Gould, Writer: Aiming for eleganceJonathan Gouldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06169533695637011148noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8839584506001378073.post-26983275955311715842014-01-27T10:04:16.669+11:002014-01-27T10:04:16.669+11:00Hi Jim. I guess I'd better say thanks for the ...Hi Jim. I guess I'd better say thanks for the comment, then follow your advice and get off the page.Jonathan Gouldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06169533695637011148noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8839584506001378073.post-32949580013381372502014-01-26T22:16:11.657+11:002014-01-26T22:16:11.657+11:00I also used to be a programmer although I tended t...I also used to be a programmer although I tended to refer to myself as a database designer since I worked solely with <i>Access</i> and <i>Sage</i>. I loved it and I do understand what you mean about elegance. The programming that I’m the fondest of is the stuff I used to do on the ZX Spectrum. What I loved about that was being able to cram as much as possible into 48K. I mean, seriously, 48K! We talk in terms of terabytes now. But you can do a lot with 48K and a bit of imagination. I designed an entire graphic adventure for the Spectrum and what I was most proud of was that the map it generated was unique every time. Every time you sat down to play it was a new experience. I remember spending days—literally days—trying to write half a dozen lines of machine code to turn the light behind a rectangular box on and off. Nowadays be have bloatware and that just disappoints me. <br /><br />Poems especially (for me at least) are little machines—that’s what William Carlos Williams called them—and the whole point to a machine is to cram all its functions into a confined space. You can’t keep adding and adding. Too many newbies don’t know how to compress. Which is why we get books that are ten- or twenty-thousand words too long. I’m a big fan of the novella. I’ve only ever written on but even my novels are on the short side, all bar one which at 90,000 words I think of as an epic and I never want to write another book that long. There’s rarely the need frankly. Say what you have to say and get off the page. That’s my motto. So here I am getting off the page. <br />Jim Murdochhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12786388638146471193noreply@blogger.com