Yesterday I downloaded an application that makes your keyboard sound like the typewriter keys from a Remington portable. It's what I learned to type on (which is hard for me to believe–you know how hard it is to press those keys down). Though I love old fashioned typewriters, I have no interest in actually using one to write my novel, romantic as it might be.

So this program, which you can find here, offers all the ease of typing on a keyboard and adds the charming sounds of typewriter keys. I find its rhythmic sound soothing, and it kind of helps to drown out external sounds while I'm writing. I can't listen to music or watch TV while I write but this slight distraction is helpful.

But I like it most because it puts me in the mind of Joe Gillis in Sunset Boulevard typing up screenplays in his Hollywood bachelor pad. I actually lived in a place like that in my mid-twenties. It was a one-room apartment with a hotplate in the closet. Dismal as it was, when I first saw it I told myself it was the perfect place for a struggling writer to live–unfortunately I did a lot of struggling, but no actual writing.

Chances are I'll get tired of the peck-peck-peck of my keyboard eventually. But for now, I'm letting the sound carry me forward to this novel's finish line.