Writing with Grace Notes | Creative Non-Fiction

From the conceptual to the mechanical and back again. Merciless chrome and black, mercifully free of cabling, of Wi-Fi range, of needy battery icons.

It is writing with sound and fury, each key an inked thwack on a page stretched taut by paper fingers, writing with echoes of thunderous roars of keystrokes within typing pools, of industry caught halfway between manual and digital.

Paper release and insert and platen knob to feed and align and paper release and carriage return and tabulator key. It is industrial, industrious writing, with comfort in becoming part of the mechanism – flesh made part of metal.

This is writing with grace notes; the strived-for uniformity of the laptop™ is gone. Instead there is the soft ding of a bell, the oiled weight of the carriage return, the tugged edging of the ribbon, working as you do.

This is a storyteller which talks back, which clacks and shifts and slides and rolls. Alongside the tale, a mechanical story furiously woven.

Thanks for reading, folks. My recent short stories include ‘Sunset Hours‘ and ‘Crib Stuck‘.

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Matthew Richardson is a writer of short stories. His work has featured in Gold Dust magazine, Literally Stories, Close to the Bone, McStorytellers, Penny Shorts, Soft Cartel, Whatever Keeps the Lights On, Flashback Fiction, Cafelit, Best MicroFiction 2021, Writer’s Egg, Idle Ink, The Wild Word, and Shooter magazine. He is a doctoral student at the University of Dundee, a lucky husband, and a proud father. He blogs at www.matthewjrichardson.com.