by Bill Meissner

—After hearing that if a literary agent didn’t recognize your name in her e-mail inbox, she would “delete your query unread.”

Once upon an ancient time, I was in love with paper. I was in love with words, with the way they pressed themselves, just so, like close friends, on the page. Words mattered, once upon a very different time.

Once I was in love with trees. The years of my life equaled the rings on a medium-sized oak tree—each ring another imprint of a dry year, or a rainy year, or something in between—and I wrote about each one. I used to slide my arms around trees and whisper to them, knowing someday they would cradle my words in their pulpy palms.

Back in the ’50s, my words were valuable; they meant something. They had weight, even though I was paid only a penny for each one I wrote. I clacked them out on a typewriter by the hundreds of thousands, the bell at the end of the margin calling bing, bing to my fingertips that were raw but beautiful on the stiff nickel and glass keys. Some nights I typed furiously, fearlessly, while the feather in the hatband of my fedora wavered, as if all those rushing thoughts created a slight breeze.

Those days, words were harder to dispose of; you needed to stab a thick eraser onto the paper until it nearly ripped. It took some time to correct your errors, to make the imperfect words perfect again. Some people even thought they needed to burn them, though I never did.

Then, if I were lucky, my words would eventually be printed in ink on pulp. The workers in a publishing house would bind thousands of copies of my version of this lovely and twisted world. Sure, that pulp yellowed over the years, but still they were my words. A person could carry them around for days; you could keep them close to you, in your pocket. Right over your heart, even.

A couple of decades later, my words could be quickly stamped onto the page by a dot matrix printer, the head buzzing and whirring like a tiny metal planet gone crazy. After a day of writing, I separated those perforated sheets page by page, then laid each in a pile, gently, as if lowering a baby into a crib.

Now, the typewriters—their keys extracted for costume jewelry—are in the scrap pile, the printers stacked in storerooms. Once my words were personal; you could taste them on the tip of your tongue. Now they’re digital and dry. They’re easy to ignore by those too busy or too tired to read. They’re sentenced to an out-box, deleted with the click of a plastic button, recycled in a cartoon trash bin. Those words are like orphans left to die in the narrowest of rooms, orphans that can’t bang on the door, but only whimper.

So where does that leave us? you might ask. In a world with words that slide by, attached to nothing, sticking to no one. Now words are weightless; they’re sent adrift, floating listlessly in cyberspace with billions of others posted each day: Can’t decide which socks to wear today.  I am still wearing slippers.  Anyone else tired? Such words are like the light from a distant star that should still be bright, but, finally, after all these years of shining, fades from our sight.

If you don’t appreciate what I’m saying, and you feel you must create more space, then go ahead—delete these words. Delete them. Delete them all unread.

Once upon another time, words were near to me, and close. I wasn’t just in love with words—they were in love with me.

I want to believe this: The words will come back someday. They’ll return with new meaning that will make the ears hear again, the fingertips feel, the tongue wake from its slumber, the eyes widen and sting with images. The words will resurrect themselves from the dark room of nothingness, and they’ll rise up again, letter by letter. I can almost picture them: the words will grow wings, and find a voice, and—if anyone is listening—they’ll speak.

Bill Meissner is director of creative writing at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota. He is the author of seven books: one novel; two short story collections, including Hitting into the Wind (Random House); and four books of poetry. His recent novel, Spirits in the Grass, won the 2008 Midwest Book Award. His pulp-fiction-writing alter ego, Mickey Underwood, who clacks out stories at a penny a word, contributed to the writing of this article, originally typed on a 1948 manual Royal Deluxe typewriter. Underwood was miffed when he learned that the essay was forwarded to the View via e-mail attachment and edited through cyberspace. Bill Meissner’s webpage is http://web.stcloudstate.edu/wjmeissner/. Underwood has no webpage. His temporary address is the Corona Hotel, Room 21, 1222 42st Street, New York, New York.