Al,
You can learn a lot from bad writing also - even if you're
not consciously aware of it. My first job out of school I had
to support and enhance the most godawful piece of code you
could ever imagine. This was 6800 assembly code, the source
listings stacked up were about 5 feet high, and not a comment
anywhere. There was no effort in the design to make the code
extensible or capable of debugging. And of course any attempt
at simplicity was ignored - the orginal developers strived
for the most complex methods possible. I got all my gray hair
at about 22 trying to work with that code, but I learned a
lot about how not to write software, how important it is to
focus on simplicity and on building code that can be extended
and debugged. As awful an experience as it was working on
that code, it was probably the best experience I could've had
to help me understand what not to do.
I guess this was a longwinded (and probably uninteresting to
anyone outside of software development) example of how
sometimes you can learn the most from bad stuff. And to some
degree I think you're influenced by everything you read. It
may not change your voice, but you may pick up different ways
(or not)of plotting, of (or not) shifting scenes, etc.
-Dave
-----Original Message----- From:
owner-rara-avis@icomm.ca [mailto:
owner-rara-avis@icomm.ca] On Behalf Of Al Guthrie Sent:
Saturday, December 07, 2002 5:34 PM To:
rara-avis@icomm.ca Subject: Re: RARA-AVIS: The Marlowe
Paradigm
----- Original Message ----- From: "Dave" <
davezelt@attbi.com>
> I agree with Anthony. As writers we learn and are
influenced to some
> degree by others writers we like and
respect.
Anthony's point was that, as an author, you are influenced by
everyone you read, not just writers you like and
respect.
Al
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