Shaggy's Left Handed Journey In Writing

Hello readers

First I would like to apologize for this post taking a little longer to get up for everyone. I haven’t been feeling the greatest, and it has made it a little harder for me to focus on anything. With any luck I will be a little more on time with my next posts.

As I was struggling to find my topic for this post, I realized that at this current moment I have no less than fifteen pens inked up. This suddenly seemed like a lot of pens, so I am working on reducing that number down at least a little bit. I know that just about everybody has figured out their own way to handle that number and this is just what I have decided to try for myself.

I think that nearly everyone who uses fountain pens goes through this quandary at some point in their journey. I think that the newer one is to the joys of fountain pens is, the more likely we all are to have all of our pens inked up at once so we can experience all the colors and nibs we are using. A big part of this is the fact that we are still learning what we like in our writing experience. As our collections grow we are too eager to ink up that new pen or try out that new ink we just got some of. This is a normal thing that everyone does when they are excited about what they have just learned. If we don’t come up with a set of rules to follow, the number of inked up pens can easily become quite unmanageable.

What I have decided to do is to have only two or three pens inked up that I will keep at home and rarely take anywhere, and then between three and five pens inked for taking out with me. While I do generally prefer to use an extra-fine pen, I enjoy changing the color of my ink too often to only have one or maybe two pens inked up. I have some pens that I will be keeping more business appropriate colored inks, but I also want to have more fun colors for the rest of my pens.

The pens that I am planning on keeping at home are my piston filling pens which I got from Amazon.com, which sadly do not seem to have any sort of locking mechanism for the piston knob. One of them is inked with Private Reserve Pearlescent Violet-Silver and another pen has Diamine Polar Glow, and both of those pens are nearly full. The last of those pens I have inked up has about a quarter tank of Monteverde Key Lime Pie dessert ink. I think that when I finish the green ink I will be cleaning that pen and putting it away for a little while.

I know that it will take me some time to get down to the eight pens that I would like to have inked up at once, but I think that I will be able to maintain that number easier after cleaning out and storing my pens as I go now. I am hoping that this limit I am imposing on myself will also see me finishing more of my inks so that I actually know what colors I want to get a full bottle of. Most of my ink supply currently is in the form of samples from Goulet Pens, as I am still fairly new to being back into fountain pens.

I am still contemplating what pens I want to have as my carry around pens, but I do know that my Monteverde Ritma (see my review of that here) will be a constant one that I take with me, and also one of the more business appropriate inks. I think that my ideal carry around pens would be two that are more business appropriate inks and two with more fun colors like bright purple. Normally I would say that any pen I get from now on would have to fall under this ruling, but I had just ordered myself a new pen just a few days ago that I will be inking up when I get it. I will be posting a review of that pen soon, so look for that post in the next week or so.

I hope that this look into my thoughts on this whole process will be of some help to you. I fully admit that this is new system that I am putting into place now, so I don’t know how well it will work. I will post updates if I wind up needing to make any changes to my system.

I am genuinely curious if any of you have either noticed this or actually come up with your own system for it, so please share your experiences! I feel like I have finally written enough with my Camlin 2R School pen, so my next post will be my review of it along with a comparison of nibs. Until next time readers. Stay happy and healthy, and keep on learning!