Larry Cordle said something very interesting. You have to understand that Larry's very country. The point is well taken though. You know when you can quit and when you have to keep writing. The next item I would like to speak about is Time.
Time can be the enemy in writing a song or it can be a friend.
Carl Jackson said that he never thought about time when he was writing a song. He felt that that would inhibit what he was trying to do. Most of the writers felt the same way. If that meant that it was four minutes and twenty seconds long then that was ok. If you lost your audience in the first thirty seconds then it didn't matter whether your song was three minutes or twenty.