Tools of the Trade

I prefer to write my novels with a fountain pen but I also am very minimal about things. I essentially have several pens (five, to be exact) but only two fountain pens and they both do very different things. My TWSBI Vac700R Extra Fine is for writing novels and my Kakimori Frost Rollerball is for everything else when life goes “do you have a pen? You need to fill this out”. I personally don’t need more than that. I have 3 dip pens but one is metal and two are glass dips of different widths. Now, I’m basically out of the market for a pen (with exception to the 3D printed spiral pen, only because of how they look). And since I am, I try to take care of the pens I have. They’re pretty, yes, but I didn’t buy them simply for that. I bought them for work.

My Kakimori Frost, I only use one ink in it now: Platinum’s Carbon Black. The Frost is meant to be my everyday pen, when I have to jot down a note, fill out a form, etc etc. It’s a waterproof ink, which I prefer to have in a document or on an envelope, where rain and knocked-over water happens. That pen lives in my bag and since I use it everyday just about and store it nib up, I don’t really clean it much. It’s meant to be used and used normally, not be finicky. Plus, it’s a rollerball, not a traditional nib, it doesn’t need to be cleaned the same since it’s internals are different. I haven’t had any skipping, squeaking, nothing with this pen & ink combo. Nice thin line, great dark ink that withstands water, cap posts on the back, good capacity that doesn’t require me to refill for months, it’s all that I want. It’s meant to be utilitarian primarily in use, plain ol’ reliable. No risk of bending a tine or flipping through colors. I can even scrawl on a cardboard box just fine. It can write thirty journal pages straight before I have to even think about refilling. Refilling isn’t a pain, it’s quick. Everything is perfect for me, I literally have no other need ignored when it comes to this pen.

The more I use my TWSBI, the more I learn about it. It has penned over a thousand pages so it’s a workhorse at this point. I use all sorts of inks in it, from shimmer inks to ultra sheeners, no matter the color. I clean it out after most ink changes but I do deep cleaning after I’m doing writing my story completely. Since I crank out whole works within a day or a couple days, I can do that. It keeps the pen clean and ready for the next time, which is important to me. Just like the Kakimori, this TWSBI wasn’t cheap so I want to take good care of it. I don’t really leave it out, I put it back in its silicone case and keep it with desiccant. I originally used desiccant I would come across from buying stuff but now I use re-usable colored desiccant, which tells me when it is time to re-dry the desiccant. Orange when dry, green when full of moisture. That has worked out super well for me because I don’t have to meticulously dry my pen, moisture is wicked away in an enclosed environment. Mine is a vacuum filler so there’s a rod coming down the middle that can make drying tough. And you’ll never get everything in the nib, water will sit there until it dries out, which isn’t much of a problem but I’m finicky. I super like this dessicant, it makes care easier. I just put it in a very breathable material to make it a little bag and just keep it in the pen case.

I keep care of my TWSBI simple because I don’t want to spend forever cleaning the pen. I have an ultrasonic cleaner to get ink and shimmer out of it thoroughly (I don’t think anything gets glitter out and as quickly quite like an ultrasonic) and I use Anderson Pens pen solution. When I’m done with the pen and its empty of ink, I rinse off the ink from the nib and start drawing in pen solution so I can empty it out in a waste dish. I do that a few times, until the napkin looks kind of clear. Drawing the pen solution up also means that there’s solution all throughout the pen. I don’t like leaving pen solution in the pen so I just dump the nib in the ultrasonic, which is filled with filtered water and let it run for about 10 minutes while I clean out the main body separately with some water. I don’t want to use a lot of water either because I plain don’t so I only really use what I need, which is probably the amount it would take to fill a soda can. Once I see that the water is clear, no shimmer glitter and there’s no color showing on the drying napkin, I wipe off the outsides as much as I can and throw the three sections (cap, nib/head, body) in the pen case for me to essentially ignore until the next day or whenever I remember, when I screw it all together as a whole pen and then put it back for the next time to write, whenever that is.

I’m a firm believer in simplicity. These pens are meant to serve utilitarian purposes, so that’s important. I don’t mind deep cleaning my TWSBI when I am done writing, because it might sit for days or months. It doesn’t mean “oh, I am a more fancy writer than one that uses a computer from the start”, it’s meant to streamline things in creation. Having a fountain pen doesn’t make you smarter or sound well read – even the ink makers don’t know how to not use the same 5 White writers to name their inks after, especially if those writers are guys. That’s far from “well-read” to me. Instead, it’s just a tool. I run through ink insanely fast so I need something that can keep up with that.

At the start, I was getting ink everywhere, all the time. Now, I have a pretty full collection and I want to wear it thin. I have already gone through two bottles of ink and several sample vials. I think I only have a couple inks I would rather get but after that, it’s a wrap. When it comes to fountain pens (or any pen), ink is the primary consumable. I already don’t really buy the same ink twice (I think I’ve only done it less than five times) because A) I have so many already B) Some ink collections are limited and when the ink maker runs out, that’s it C) I already wrote with that one, time to pick a different one. I’ve seen ink influencers (yes, they exist, surprisingly) have major payloads of ink, enough to stock a store and still have extras in the back, and one thing they get asked is “What are you going to do with all that ink?” Yeah, journaling exhausts ink but not a lot. One bottle will last you over a year, easy. A couple years. Maybe even more than that. I probably know my ink capacity down to a science, how much ink will produce how ever many pages. I have probably twelve or fifteen bottles of inks, a 50 ml bottle will produce about 600 journal pages (as I learned back in Korea). Some of my bottles are more than that (85ml at the max) or less than that (25ml bottles).

Almost each and every bottle has been used at this point but right now, I’m trying to shrink down my sample vials collection because it’s creating some overflow in my writing drawer I’d like to reduce. I keep my inks hidden from sun and in their boxes because I don’t want to see my collections all the time, where they can fall and break, and because the boxes the inks come in are totally lovely. I don’t drink alcohol at all and fairly abhor it so it’s nice I can collect ink bottles because, yay, pretty bottles. When I empty a vial, I clean it out and hold on to it so I can give sample inks to others if I want (I learned my lesson when I used a little sauce canister recycled from takeout. It wasn’t made for that). I think, where my current collection stands, I have enough ink to write maybe three thousand pages, ball-parking it. Sounds like a lot until I look at my story list, the average book I pen is about mid 200 pages. And I have over 40 planned. The book series I went to Korea for was about 570 pages and that’s just Book One – and I’m still far from done 🙃🔫 I’m a prolific writer so I can exhaust a bottle of ink pretty fast. But I still want to work down my current collection since I literally don’t need more (at the moment).

I bought a crapton of ink from Ferris Wheel Press at the start so that’s the majority of my collection, probably. I love their inks, so beautiful and whimsical. I have each of their bottles, the big orb (85ml), slated circle (38ml), small orb (20ml) and even their sample size (10ml). I don’t have their dip pen bottle but I’m holding off for now since I don’t use dip pen-only inks, dip pens are for writing with fountain pen inks as well. I’m still looking for a Black ink maker, though, so I’ll buy a bottle if I find one. The last bottle of inks I bought were in Korea from Dominant Industry & Wearingeul. I was in Korea and I even have custom colors I made at Dominant, so that’s a little different. Whatever ink I don’t want, I give away to other writers of color. I’m not going to waste any ink, even the kind I don’t like. Especially since some of the inks come from pricy brands.

I have so many blue inks 🥴 Like “Do you love the color of the sky” many. I lean towards stormy hued inks but, still, I have so many blue inks, stormy or not. As a result, I’ve gone more towards orange/salmon inks, but currently, they’re samples because if it is too light, there’s no point in buying a big bottle of it. I already have several too-light inks (Ferris Wheel Press’ Dusk In Bloom, Colorverse’s Cancer the Crab, etc) so I definitely don’t want more. The fact I have too many blue inks is also why I haven’t added more inks. I inadvertently get more blue somehow. Might as well work down the inks I already have.

When I was younger, I super loved the colorfulness of gel pens. I kind of kept with that vibe in my inks. I like writing with color. It helps with the vibe of the story on the first draft. Plus, with my inks, if I get tired of a color, I can always switch to another.

As it pertains to fountain pens, I have a use for them since I’m a writer and I write by hand. I think it’s wild when people get elitist about owning one, it doesn’t mean much – especially if you’re not really using them in general. I wouldn’t use a fountain pen at all if I didn’t have a skill set that can include it. Due to how potentially pricy pens can get (the cheapest is $5 (a preppy fountain pen) but the most expensive is thousands of dollars), possible ink messiness, etc etc, I would never suggest someone to get a pen if they genuinely barely use a plain old Bic. Yeah, they’re pretty but it can also be a pretty waste of money if you’re not using it. It doesn’t make the story better nor makes a person more creative, it’s just a tool of the trade, like a guitarist does with their guitar. It’s also a sustainability thing for me because I’m not tearing apart pens for their ink sticks and throwing the rest of the body away, that’s wasteful. All I need is a steady supply of ink, not much else. And two fountain pens is just enough for me, especially since each pen has a different job.