I know you remember the clack of the keys,
but can you still hear the bell that rang in the paper,
several seconds before flush-at-the-right-margin,
reminding
you to return the carriage, much as Cinderella did
at midnight? I don’t want to make too much
of the bell. It took its place in the ambience of
writing;
it rang for the typing pool and novelist alike. Still,
in those early days, every line tolled its own
unmelodic music. For me, it was the Eden of the
sentence:
writing to people who could answer still. Writing to
places
like Belclaire East, in Texas. A few years later, I could
type a little faster, and the bells followed true
on one another—sounding more like the machine
the thing really was, and less like what inspiration
takes.