It begins. I’m starting a novel. These are my tools:
4”x6” index cards — For my notes. The plastic box is a dumping ground for scene sketches, setting and character details, and random tidbits I don’t want to lose. I started filling the box before I had time to get real about starting a draft.
I get a lot of card-worthy ideas in the shower, on walks, and when I’m driving. I jot them down as soon as I’m dry or have a place to pull over.
Lamy 2000 fountain pen — Anyone who knows me has heard me rant about this pen to all who will listen. It also happens to be Neil Gaiman’s favorite.
Yellow legal pads — I draft everything longhand first. Something about the flimsy yellow paper reminds me that it’s just a draft and anything I put down is subject to change and deletion.
13” MacBook Air — The 2013 model. I’m not impressed with Apple’s latest offerings. From what I can tell, the touch-bar is just a better way to pause Spotify… The downside of writing longhand is the drudgery of transcription. Lately I’ve been playing with voice recognition, which is faster and also gives me a chance to hear how the page sounds. Taking words from the legal pad to the screen is like a first round of editing.
Yes, I happen to be starting in November. No, I’m not doing NaNoWriMo. The “two crappy pages per day” rule won’t get me to THE END in a month, and I’m okay with that.
DISCLAIMER: This post contains affiliate links. All Amazon prices and availability are subject to change, and only current as of the time of publication of this review.
As much as love writing with a fountain pen, it’s not always the right tool for the job. For jotting random notes, you’re better off with something you don’t have to uncap. Obviously the Pilot Vanishing Point can do that, but its price kind of rules it out as the pocket pen that might end up in the wash.
Something about note taking or making grocery lists with a fountain pen feels like a slight to the instrument. Part of the fun of fountain pens is the ritual aspect. It’s nice to have a pen that’s just for long form writing.
That said, my fountain pen habit has raised my standards for what writing should feel like. I don’t have to use a fountain pen, but I can’t settle for any old pen. Fortunately, I don’t have to settle. There are some excellent jotters out there that are cheap, easy to find, and smooth. here are my favorites.
Pilot G2
The current go-to in my pen cup and the #1 pen on Amazon, the Pilot G2 excels at being average and dependable. This is the Honda Civic option. It’s reliable, everyone has one, and for those of us who move on to something nicer, this was often our first experience of a good pen.
I like it because it’s everywhere. This is the best pen you can buy at Rite-Aid or Walgreens. It’s cheap, and you’ll lose it before it runs out of ink.
My bouquet of G2s
There are smoother pens out there, even in the disposable category, but what brings me back to the Pilot again and again is its wide availability. For a look at its downsides, check out Office Supply Geek.
Bic Orange Ball Pen
Like Bic lighters, Bic pens are classics of functional thrift that outclass everything in their price range and many above it. They’re made insanely well and priced ludicrously cheap.
The Cristal and Orange Ball models have hexagonal barrels rather than round ones which make them more comfortable to grip than the round Bics, that is until you get writer’s cramp anyway because, after all, you’re writing with a ball point pen.
Bic claims their ball points contain enough ink to lay down 2km worth of ink. But that doesn’t matter, because you’ll never be attached enough to a single Bic to do that much writing with it. At around $5 for a pack of 20, these cost $0.25 apiece.
Zebra F-701
Or the Jason Bourne option… The Zebra’s barrel is made of solid steel, so it’s indestructible. This pen could save your life. It can be used to punch out glass to escape a wrecked or sinking car or as a last-ditch self defense weapon. But it’s also available wherever cheap pens are sold.
This recommendation comes from retired commando Clint Emerson’s book, 100 Deadly Skills.
Uni-ball Signo
Japan’s Uni-ball makes a line of inexpensive gel pens, some of which are widely available in the States, all of which are a joy to write with. If you’re not into fountain pens, but want a smooth writing experience, look no further. I like the Signo because it clicks open and makes for a great pocket pen, but for some reason, the UM151 and the Vision tend to write better and feel more substantial in the hand.
According to JetPen’s Comprehensive Guide to Uni-Ball, these pens owe their smoothness to an edgeless tip with rounded corners where the rolling ball meets the housing at the tip of the pen. The result is zero scratchiness no matter what angle you write at. Few fountain pens write this well.
Blackwing 601 Pencil
John Steinbeck wrote about this pencil, calling “the best he’s ever found.” Quincy Jones used it to correct his sheet music, Nabokov wrote with it–in lawn chairs and passenger seats while his wife, Vera, drove—and the creators of MadMen put it in the hands of the copywriters and the art department on that show. The cult following of this pen has a home online at BlackwingPages.
If you’re into fountain pens for the history and the heritage, the Blackwing delivers that in an erasable media. It was discontinued in 1998, but you can still buy it online.
DISCLAIMER: This post contains affiliate links. All Amazon prices and availability are subject to change, and only current as of the time of publication of this review.
This week, I’m breaking away from budget pens to bring you a splurge option: the Kaweco AL Sport.
“Al” stands for aluminum–as you may remember from the periodic table–and that’s what it’s made of. Other than the material, everything abut it is identical to the plastic Kaweco Classic Sport. But the metal makes a difference in terms of writing experience, looks, and price. At $65, this is an entry into the world of so-called “fine” pens or pens that would make you say “who the fuck would pay that much for a pen?” depending on how you look at it.
The Nib
See my review of the Classic Sport and my thoughts on paper fickleness. The two pens have the same nib in different colors.
The Writing Experience
This is a hefty pen. It’s not overweight. It’s not unbalanced. It’s just substantial. A light touch is all you need because the AL writes under its own weight. This saves your hand over long writing sessions.
So far this has been a smooth, reliable, no nonsense writer.
The medium nib feels a little bit too much like a magic marker sometimes, and the extra weight makes for a bold line. If had known that, I would have gone with an extra fine–which, in Kaweco’s case, isn’t all that fine.
Looks & Design
It’s gorgeous. Kaweco over-delivers in the looks department. Even their cheaper pens have an attention to detail way beyond their price point.
The Nibs are gorgeous. The parts you never look at, like the back of the feed, are stamped with the logo.
The AL improves upon one minor aesthetic issues with the Classic. there are no cheap-looking seams on the body where it unscrews from the section.
There are more affordable aluminum metal-bodied pens out there–like the Pilot Metropolitan–but what sets this one apart is the matte finish. It feels amazing in the hand–closer to the Lammy 2000 than its plastic counterpart.
From what I’ve seen so far, this is a durable little writing tool. It reminds me of those tactical pens that are popular at the moment.
It comes in a delightful, and useful tin box.
Also Available in Denim…
I love what Kaweco has done with the Sport line. They’re fun, they’re collectable, they give the impression that the company wants to innovate and delight rather than just cash in on their legacy. Kaweco is like the Swatch of fountain pens.
The AL Sport Stonewashed is the color of faded blue jeans, with the paint strategically worn and chipped away. This makes me excited to see how my AL weathers from years of abuse. The AL Raw Aluminum looks how they may have pictured pens of the future back in 1925.
The Bottom line
This is my pick for the best EDC (everyday carry) pen. Period. It’s unbreakable, reliable, and the design lives up to the Kaweco Sport slogan: “small in your pocket, big in your hand.”
Whether the advantages over the Classic Sport are worth the significant price difference is a personal thing. But if you’re ready for a more expensive pen, I can’t think of a better option in the $50-100 range.
DISCLAIMER: This post contains affiliate links. All Amazon prices and availability are subject to change, and only current as of the time of publication of this review.
My fountain pen reviews have found an audience on Reddit where they’ve prompted a discussion that has been extremely educational for me. It blows my mind how much there is to know about pens and how civil pen people are talking about them online.
In response to my review of the Kaweco Sport, one Redditor (/U/oyogen) pointed out an issue I forgot to mention about the pen.
“Kaweco nibs are often over-polished, leading to hard starts on smoother papers. I’ve tried on copier paper, it starts easier, but still skips a part of the stroke.”
I had read about this in some negative reviews of the Sport. When I got mine home and inked it, I noticed that it was skipping on a glossy legal pad. When I switched to my Leuchturm notebook, it wrote fine. I was so stoked about my new pen that I forgot about the false start and attributed it to the paper. Having tested it on glossy paper again, I can say this is an issue with the Sport.
So, should this scare you off the Kaweco? It depends. If you’re attached to one particular brand of paper, then you might want to test it and see if the nib agrees with your paper first. But if you’re not picky, this shouldn’t be a problem. You can always write on something different. As luck would have it, the paper that does work with this pen tends to be cheaper and more abundant.
DISCLAIMER: This post contains affiliate links. All Amazon prices and availability are subject to change, and only current as of the time of publication of this review.
The Pilot Varsity is a disposable fountain pen. I have to keep reminding myself of that fact as I review it.
It’s a disposable fountain pen, I don’t need to go too in-depth…
It’s a disposable fountain pen, maybe I should hold it to a different standard…
It’s a disposable fountain pen, isn’t that an oxymoron…
The Writing Experience
I mean, it’s designed to end up in the trash. That said, the Varsity is not an awful writer. Pilot seems to have made up for the cheapness by designing a very tolerant nib. It’s basically a ball that allows you to write from just about any angle. This is probably helpful for a newbie who’s used to holding a ballpoint pen vertically. I’ve given these to friends who write with the nib upside-down (metal facing the page) with no trouble.
But a nib that doesn’t care which way you hold it doesn’t give you much of a writing experience. There’s no line variation even when you practically press it through the page. Based on feeling alone I don’t know that I could tell the difference between a Varsity and a gel pen.
Design and Looks
Not too bad, considering it has a barcode printed on the barrel. The lines are super clean and it’s much more balanced that the Pilot Metropolitan, which costs eight times as much.
This feels like a fountain pen, not just a cheap pen with a nib at the business end of it, which is more than you can say for a lot of the more expensive models.
The Ink
I’ve owned a ton of these and I’ve never had one run out of ink. But then again, I’ve never been attached enough to write one dry. There’s a lot of ink in there, I know that much. Whether it’s enough to be cheaper than buying cartridges for a non-disposable pen–I doubt it.
The Bottom Line
There’s two kinds of people who will love this pen:
Someone who thinks $2 is expensive for a pen.
Someone who refuses to use anything but a fountain pen, even for grocery lists and whatnot.
You can buy the Pilot Varsity in bulk. A seven-pack goes for $12 and a set of three is $8. You can find these at Rite Aid and Staples.
DISCLAIMER: This post contains affiliate links. All Amazon prices and availability are subject to change, and only current as of the time of publication of this review.
