good advice, badly followed

I've been advised that to be a successful writer I have to write every day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Good advice, but badly followed.

I do write everyday, but not always about "the story." The rejection notes to the wonderful artists have been difficult. I have some segments, "I've decided to work with a different artist," that are pretty much one-size-fit-all. However, these people took time to make sketches, ask questions, think about my project. I know how I'd want to be treated. The least I can do is give each a note. While we travel to Colorado for my uncle's funeral, I doubt that I put a word on anything more than the visitor's log or the charge card slip for the hotel room. Does that mean that this isn't important to me? I've heard that conclusion being figuratively jumped to before. Yes, where we put our time is more an indication of our values than where we put our words. But family matters to me, and I can put one important thing on hold for a while to deal with another important thing. Life isn't all or nothing. It is a negotiation between the good things we want and the structure we have to have to get those good things. Like bridges on I35W, we may not want to take the time or make the effort to maintain the structure, but results when we don't are worse than not getting 250 new words on paper.

Of course, the lullaby is completely written. It was written when my elder son was still a baby, and first performed shortly before Christmas in 1981. I sang it to my son and my husband while we were driving in the old mustard yellow, dented-on-every-possible-surface 1973 Toyota pickup. I recorded it first in 1982 after Helen came to visit us. We put it on an audio-tape we sent to her. We had made several tapes for her. When we went to visit her, she sat down at her piano and opened sheet music, and began to play a lovely arrangement she had made for us of the song. I do not know what happened to that sheet music. I would love to have it now.

This may well be the last entry until after school starts--not because I don't care, but because I need to maintain my bridges.