“OK, here goes,” he said, standing and striding to his writing desk.
‘Where are we going?” she asked.
He sat down, cracked his knuckles, and opened his laptop.
“I am going to write The Great American Novel.”
“Huh,” she said dismissively. “It’s been done. Huck Finn. The Scarlet Letter. Moby-Dick. Project Hail Mary.”
“Yeah, well,” he said, wind starting to seep out of his sails, “this will be MY Great American Novel.”
“I’m telling you, it’s been done,” she said. “Try shooting lower.”
“What, the Great American Short Story?”
“For the love of God, Montresor!” she said.
“Fine, I’m not Poe — but I’m me!”
“Now you’re starting to make a little sense,” she said. “Just write The Greatest Novel You Can Write. You’re not the one who gets to decide whether it’s the next Great American Novel anyway.”
He grinned. “Why are you always right?”
“I don’t know, but that’s why you love me,” she said.
(Crimson Sky on New Year’s Morn is my latest album, available for your listening pleasure on every conceivable streaming service. No, really.)
By the end of January, it became clear that I had started the year on a musical roll. I had written seven songs in a row since New Year’s Eve, all of which made it into the final lineup of a dozen songs. Then, on Feb. 1, for the first time in 2026, I started to write a song that sort of fizzled out. It happens, more often than not — in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever before composed seven decent tunes in a row.
I didn’t try writing on Feb. 2, and on the 3rd, walking toward my guitar stands, I said out loud, “I need a new song.”
In that moment of inspiration — or perhaps desperation — I conceived a song in the old folkie tradition of changing just word in each stanza to advance the message, and in a matter of minutes I had the words to the eighth “keeper” for my album.
Over the next week I plucked the ninth and 10th songs out of the ether, and on Feb. 9 I began tinkering with song order. I had several ideas for how to start the album and about which song could follow what.
But I didn’t have a candidate that would make a natural closing message. And so, being as literal as I had been the previous Monday, I took out my song notebook and penciled “Last Song” at the top of the page.
So what would be my encouragement to whoever might listen to these songs in order? What do I want to leave you with? That wasn’t terribly hard to figure out.
If this will be my last song, let me sing of peace and love, Let it be a song of Jesus and blessings from above. Let the words comfort the hurting and lift up tired souls; Let the music sing of angels and wonders to behold.
So now I had 11 songs for the album. I spent a couple of days freaked out because I didn’t want “My Last Song” to be the last song I ever wrote, so I sat down on the 11th intent on writing a 12th song that would fit somewhere else. But that’s a story for another day.
