What a relief! Just completed assignment number one for one of my courses. 1600 words of perfect prose (although there was one missing pronoun that I discovered after e-mailing it out to the class). We workshop the piece tomorrow night. Workshopping is a frightening experience, I've concluded.

It's like being ripped to shreds by a pack of hungry beasts. Maybe that's wrong. Perhaps it's a useful way of discovering the weaknesses in your work, a method of taking another person's point of view. In any case, I'm frankly terrified. Probably I'll just cower in my seat like a rabbit caught in the headlights of an on-coming vehicle. On the other hand, maybe I'll enjoy all the attention. We all love to be talked about, after all.

I remember in the first class of the course, some weeks back... We had to interview our neighbour and write a few hundred words, in class, to make up a story. A tough assignment. My confrere — or should I say consoeur — did a nice little job on me. And because she's the outgoing type, and quite confident to boot, she read the thing out to the rest of the class! Mortified!

But I survived. To greet another day with assurance and humour. Now that I've finished my assignment, I'm going to sit down and read the assigned readings for Monday night's class. I haven't had time to read anything else for weeks.