I press the bar on the old electric typewriter to advance the line. In a frenzy of ideas, I type like mad, not pausing to think. The words flow out of my fingers as they dash away at the keys, the letters appearing on the paper in all the haste I am typing with. I pause to type over my mistakes.

And then I stop. The rush hour has ended, the madness has passed, and I am out of ideas. I stare at the round keys for a while, in denial, waiting for that creative adrenaline to start up again, sitting latently until it returns. Now the keys stare at me. I lift my fingers to the on/off switch, letting them hover for a moment until I hesitantly push the switch, and shut it off.

I crumble. I want to say so much! I have so many feelings I haven’t had chase after for me for ages, and I can do nothing with them. Sitting there, the frustration eats away at me, and the passing air in the room shatters me into billions of flakes of unimportance as my nothingness is carried out the window.

I can feel horrid tears of frustration pushing at my eyes but I won’t let them emerge. Gingerly, I rest my head against the top of the machine. Ah, yes. My typewriter. How I wished to use it more, to write lengthy novels destined for something greater! I yearned to see the line advance unable to keep up with me, the pages flying out of the machine of their own accord.

This typewriter was my friend. She stood ever patient at my desk, always waiting for me to sit down and pound away with no mind or matter to previous words. She always saw what others did not. She saw my creative ingenuities, and my failures. She did not witness only what I thought was good for her to see, she saw it all. In fact, she helped me create it; these works were as much hers as they were mine!

Again, I felt it, so excited that I nearly toppled out of my chair. The ideas began to wind into braids in my head; the thoughts and plots and places and characters, acting as string to wind together. I ran my hand over the polished, white keys, the sparks and thoughts from my brain nearly flying onto the ivory letters and typing the story themselves, free of my fingers. With all due haste, I flip the power switch. And once more, I type away like a madwoman.

Click click click click click.

Thank you, typewriter.