Over three decades I've averaged about 12 songs a year. There have been a couple of fallow years and the odd bumper crop but generally I've written between 10 and 15. And by writing, I mean finishing something that was started several days, several months or several years before.
If you've written three or four hundred songs you get called prolific. But a dozen songs a year is not a lot.
Somehow the songs turn up, one by one. Or so far they have. I never know where the next one's coming from. There may never be a next one. I take comfort from the words of Thomas Mann: "A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people."
I wake up every morning and hope there's still one more tune ambling towards me down the road.
Paul Kelly
