…Steve must’ve made blueberry pancakes for breakfast. Aaaaaah. I do so love blueberry pancakes and so seldom have them. Can’t order them when we’re having breakfast out, because I go right to sleep, after. Too many carbs-and-sugars, and not enough coffee and protein in the universe to balance it out, and, since we’re usually On The Road when we eat breakfast out…not a good combo.
So, anyway — blueberry pancakes at home to start the day, then some on-line ordering — I have committed to a so-called “beginner’s” fountain pen, on the theory that it will be easier on my wrists, and more forgiving of the Obscenely Uneven Pressure which is my best effort at writing with a pen nowadays.
Why do I want a pen that’s easy on the wrists? Well. . .it’s come to my attention that this book wants to be written first-draft-by-hand. I can either sit at my desk and stare at the screen for hours at a time, sweating blood for five hundred grudging words, or! I can sit in my nice chair over there in the reading corner, with a yellow pad and a pen and zip out 2,000 words in an hour.
Even I can understand a message that clear. The various daily pens — Sarsa gel-clicks, and a nice Levenger’s rollerball — are good in rotation, but I’m thinking one more would be a nice increase in my range, so to speak, and so the Pilot Metropolitan Animal (oooh) will be with me on Tuesday.
In other news, I’m going to try to publish Change Management: Adventures in the Liaden Universe® No. 23 as a paper edition today, in between the Rest of It, and then — we’ll see what we see. This is, as I’ve probably already mentioned, very much an experiment.
I am aware that we have fallen behind in updating our Patreon page. There are Reasons, mostly having to do with that army of ducks I mentioned the other day, but I won’t bore you with them, and in fact, the reasons don’t matter, except insofar as they demonstrate that we’re apparently trying to eat something very much bigger than our heads. We hope to resume the readings, on a less-ambitious schedule, soon, and we thank you for your patience.
I think that’s all the news from the Cat Farm today. I hope everyone has a pleasant day.
The Lamy Safari is another very good entry-level pen. Not as inexpensive as the Metropolitan, but you can swap out nibs from Extra-Fine to Broad on most of them, and the three-sided section (grip area) helps to make it easy on your fingers.
Yes, pen junkie here.
Thanks again for “Due Diligence.” I really enjoyed it, and remembered to leave a review.
A couple people had recommended the Safari, but…not easy to find. Or maybe I mean, not easy to find at a price I was willing to pay to find out if it would be useful. That’s good to know about being about the change out the nibs — and the 3-sided grip, too.
Another pen junkie here. The Metropolitan is a fine pen, and I wish you much joy with it. I can tell you that fountain pens can be MUCH easier on the hands that even the best roller ball. They can be a little picky about paper, though. Lines written with a fountain pen tend to spread when written on ‘the wrong’ paper. The ‘right’ paper can be quite inexpensive, though, and as the saying goes, your mileage may vary.
I have several pilot metropolitans – in different colors to match my different color inks since I color code my notes at work. I really like them. You can get a converter to use bottles inks if you get tired of the limited color selection available in their cartridges.
I have a Lamy Safari, too — a present from a friend when I got my MFA. I like it a lot – the trianglular grip is very comfortable and I’ve tried a couple of different nibs. My handwriting is worse with it than with the gel pens (my fave is the Jimnie gel by Zebra), but I enjoy writing with it more than with the gels. The ink on my fingers makes me feel productive. 🙂
One caveat is that if the ink doesn’t flow well, you probably have an elderly, drying cartridge — I thought the pen was bad at first.
I *adore* fountain pens. I have one now, that was on sale, and wish I had more use for it, I rarely have occasion to write. I’ve been studying something by writing it out now and then.