Episode 577: An Unasked-for Extension

Woke up this morning to learn through Twitter that we now have an extension on our EN232 portfolio. So that makes two portfolios due in for Week 3, both of which I've brought so close to completion that if I stayed up all night, I could have them printed off by tomorrow morning. Instead, I've taken a day off. Again. Watched the remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still, which was awful because not a lot seemed to happen and Keanu Reeves may have done some good work, but watching him being expressionless isn't very entertaining. Am now reading the latest entry in The Dresden Files series and it's like coming back to an old friend. You can spot the jokes before they come, but you still like them anyway. I'm planning to stay up as long as necessary to finish it in one sitting, and then I'll try to finish off whatever's left of the Thom Gunn volumes I've been reading on and off, if it's not too late. Am going to get a long-overdue haircut tomorrow, so I might as well drop stuff off at the Library while I'm at it.

To be honest, I don't know whether to feel pleased or annoyed about the extension. I'm sure there are people for whom it's literally a godsend so bully for them, but for me, the problem now is that I can't pretend that I haven't time to revise my work to make it better. Oh, it's been well-received so far by people who've bothered to let me know they've read it, the most random being Vishna dropping me a message on Facebook telling me she loved it, even though we hardly see each other despite being on the same course. So the work is resonating with people. Some people, anyway. Am I prepared to spend the effort tinkering? To be brutally honest with myself, no. If it was good enough for half a dozen people so far, it's good enough for me to want to just print it off and hand it in. In all likelihood, this is also the sort of attitude that will hamper any of my attempts to become a 'serious writer', whatever that even means. Does that bother me? Some days, yes. Most of the time though, I just want people to like my writing, even if it doesn't measure up to my own perfectionism.