The Cussedness of Fountain Pens
It’s pretentious to start a blog post off with a quotation, but then it’s probably a bit precious sounding to write about fountain pens in the first place. But here you go by Mark Twain:
““None of us can have as many virtues as the fountain-pen, or half its cussedness; but we can try.””
Fun fact about me: I worked in a fancy stationery store for a couple of years in between library gigs. I was the writing instrument person, and we sold quite expensive lines along with some more humble ones. But it was fun playing around with the Porsches, Viscontis, Faber-Castells, Lamys, among others. At home I write almost exclusively with a fountain pen and currently have four on the go, and each interestingly utilize slightly different filling systems. I have a Pilot vanishing point or retractable nib pen with a convertor, a TWSBi which is a piston filling system, an Opus 88 which is eyedropper filled, and then a Kaweco Sport which is a cartridge pen.
For myself, a very picky person when it comes to writing instruments, I prefer the 1.1 stub or italic nib, and will usually not write or purchase a pen without it. That said, the Kaweco sport is just a regular fine nib and it’s nice for making grocery lists, to-do lists etc.
After years of trying almost every brand and colour of ink under the sun, I have settled exclusively on Pilot ink, and in shades of blue, though get this, I now pretty much only want to write in black. Black like my heart you could say hahaha.
I’ve been linking to The Goulet Pen Company in the US because the majority of my readers are from the States, but if you’re in Canada you might have a local stationery store to support or there is LSF Pens, which was the supplier back in the day to the now defunct store where I worked.
But let’s get back to the cussedness of fountain pens. There is nothing more pleasing than to write with a newly filled, well-flowing fountain pen, on the pages of a C.D. Notebook (another obsession). Let me make this case for writers of all kinds to use a fountain pen: the more you write and use your writing instrument, the better it will flow. If you leave off writing, there is the possibility that the ink will dry in the mechanism, and things will start to get hinky. Which is to say blotchy or dry or skippish. The more you write the more you flow. And that, my friends is the secret to fountain pens and the secret to writing. And the secret to refraining from giving in to the cussedness of it all. You know.
Also, better than the text or email that you type out and then delete, I highly recommend writing out any anger on a steno or task pad with flourishes and fancy swirls, and then dramatically ripping the top sheet off, crumpling it up as noisily as possible, and then tossing it forcefully and accurately into a wastebasket. Yes, it’s a bit old school, but will save you the world of heartache and regret.
Some other fun facts: when you work in a stationery store it’s so annoying when someone spells it stationary. The trick for remembering is that a stationery store sells envelopes.
Useful, right? Of course, when you work in a liberry, you cannot afford to be snobbish about such things.
Wishing you a flow of writing this week and looking forward to meeting again in this space, next week.
