You Go Right Ahead

Flannery O'Connor wrote to Cecil Dawkins on April 25, 1962:

[Eudora Welty] told a story about a beauty parlor operator in Jackson who writes novels about the Northwest Mounted Police. She sent one of her love scenes through the mail to Faulkner for criticism and when she didn't hear from him she called him up and said, "Mr. Faulkner, what did you think of that little love scene of mine?" He said, "Honey, it isn't the way I would do it, but you go right ahead, you go right ahead."

I have no aspirations to write fiction, let alone at the Faulknerian level. But I thought of this passage the other day when I was working my way through an ASP web page and the VB code behind it. Once I might have relished the challenge of rewriting the files. Now I murmur, "It's not the way I'd do it, but ... " and I make the fewest changes needed to accomplish my task.