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October 2, 2006

This is the first time since mid-July that I’m home for more than five days in a row. It takes about a week to find my feet, to get back into a routine. When I worked full-time, I was on the road a lot – Tokyo, London, Sydney. I once commuted to Toronto every week from Westport, leaving the house on a Monday at 5 AM, returning Friday around 9 PM. I don’t miss that.

I took a yoga class each day this week, sometimes two. Although my ability to hold postures was far short of where I was prior to this travel, I’m far enough along in my practice to know that’s okay. I now have the strength to retreat into child’s pose when necessary. Last year I hurt my back pushing instead of listening to my body.

I didn’t get a lot of writing done this week. A few years ago that would have caused panic, but I went with it. I did a lot of cleaning instead. Buried in file cabinets were pages of early drafts and notes on songs, short stories and novels. I saved eight years worth of work, even illegible scribble. None saw the light of day since it was filed, so I tossed it all, over five-thousand pages.

I also found articles on writing, notes from conferences, snippets from song classes, things that I’m sure are very useful, but I’ve never looked at a single page, so out they went. Six large garbage bags were delivered to the Westport dump on Friday.

This week my songs were posted on the 615 Music site down in Nashville. They are part of a song catalog aimed at the film/tv market. 615 has been in that business for over twenty years. They wrote a theme song for NBC’s Today Show.

I’ve spent my whole life hanging out with great musicians so I’ve hooked up lots of my friends and acquaintances. It’s unlikely that we’ll get rich on this deal, but a little cash, a little exposure, it never hurts. It’s one of many things an artist can do to get ahead. If you, or anyone you know, has great original music with vocals, shoot me an email, I’m in need of all types of music.

Also this week:

Poets and Writers Magazine hired me to write an article about the three most important writers conferences – Squaw Valley, Sewanee, and Bread Loaf.

I’d pitched them on a handful of ideas over the years, all were politely rejected, but last month they did print a letter I wrote about an article they’d run on web sites. On Friday they contacted me about writing this piece on the big three writers’ conferences. It just goes to show that persistence does pay off.