Why Do You Use A Fountain Pen?

[RMN]

I tried writing with corn cobs and butter beans and yellow squash and both dill and sweet pickles, with hamburgers, pork chops, chamber pots, a kitten and a Louisville Slugger bat, but none worked as well as my fountain pens, but the kitten did offer more entertainment though trying to fill or flush a kitten can be challenging.

You'll have the humane society on you like a ton of bricks...

 

D.ick

[georges zaslavsky]

I use a fountain pen for several reasons:

-a lot of people I know who use fountain pens or people that I write letters to are people that have a broad culture, I think a fp is a sign of someone who has a good education and culture

-I have a light pressure but that is the fact that I am not a bic nor a rollerball user

-since I am 7 I only used fps and don't plan to change and most of my family use fps

-my grand father used to write with a french made button filler that I still have and that is partly because of him if I use a fp

-also the rich variety of ink colors is what I stick to fps

-also fp collectors are also watch collectors, guns collectors, knives collectors, cars collectors but also bicycle riders and share common interests with me

Edited June 16, 2013 by georges zaslavsky

[pajaro]

I thnk I have better control of my writing with a fountain pen.

 

I enjoy looking over the pens in my modest collection, just as I enjoy looking over the postage stamps in my stamp collection. I enjoy slowly adding stamps I have always wanted. With pens, though, I sometimes feel like a pen glutton, adding pens I'll never likely use much, if at all. It's fun, though, and I often wonder who used these old pens.

[Mesu]

My writing is much better with a pen which gives me feedback, which a ball point pen doesn't.

 

Love the colors of inks available, and what's better, i can create an ink color of my liking instead of limiting myself to the bottled options.

[At Midnight]

It makes my handwriting readable

[Opooh]

Read the tea ceremony in " Thousand Cranes" by Yasunari Kawabata and you'll find the reason.

[H. Lime]

Well, I saw my father write with them and also whenever I used a BP to take notes the paper ended up looking like it had been worked on with a chisel.

 

This is all true but, to be quite honest, my first proper pen got me hooked because of its elegance and once I've had the chance to play a bit with a flex-y nib, it had been too late to turn back (as far as I can tell, my handwriting has not improved).

[cbaytan]

Read the tea ceremony in " Thousand Cranes" by Yasunari Kawabata and you'll find the reason.

 

I won't read it.

[Opooh]

I won't read it.

Zen .

[Fernan]

I just love the feeling of writing with such an instrument...

 

Been writing with mine for decades concurrently with pencils, ballpoints, typewriters, electronic systems, dip pens, rollerballs, whatever... etc. Fountain pens remain my preferred writing instrument.

[flyingfox]

Number one reason for me is- I just love all the colors of inks that are available.

 

I used fountain pens briefly when I was in HS, but started using them regularly back in 2002. When I was in Montreal for the first time, I wandered into a nice little stationery store. I saw a bottle/ color sample of Poussiere de Lune by J. Herbin, and I was in love. I bought a bottle of PdL along with a Lamy Safari and a converter, just so that I could use it. I mean- I seriously wonder if you can ever find a pre-filled pen that has an ink color like that! (Now I know that it is a very unique color even among fountain pen inks, but anyhow.)

 

I have other reasons as well. Improved hand writing being the second one, but tht is not nearly as emotionally up-lifting as the colors.

[Strombomboli]

I chose "other" because it just never occurred to me to use anything else. I've always written with my Peliken, which was my second or third fountain pen and was bought when I was a pupil.

 

I only started to get interested in other pens when this one was a little broken (which was not the fault of the pen, but the result of a wrong converter, bought from a posh fountain pen store on their advice, which has completely lost me as a consumer; I am pretty angry with them).

 

I also realized over the course of time, that I really can't write with ballpoint pens. I can write with rollerballs, though, they are an acceptable substitute, should one be needed. But none is needed now, since I now own pens for every purpose you could think of, also in every colour you can imagine, except for green. I don't like green ink.

Edited June 22, 2013 by Strombomboli

[GabrielleDuVent]

Read the tea ceremony in " Thousand Cranes" by Yasunari Kawabata and you'll find the reason.

 

He writes beautiful sentences but the stories aren't that... intriguing. I'm not sure how the beauty of the sentences translate. :S

[misslucy107]

Very interesting question and discussion, thanks for starting it, Gabrielle!

 

As a fountain pen writes much more smoothly than a ballpoint, I always write longhand with a fountain pen, which helps me to get into the flow. When my writing is fluent, my thinking becomes more fluent too.

 

Fountain pens match my romantic notion of being a writer, sitting in a cafe with notebook, dreaming and writing.

 

I love discovering new inks and writing in colors that are brilliant and alive, which makes fountain pens perfect. I also love the fact that this makes me a bit different from most people around me. We all want to be unique in one way or another.

 

And, at the risk of sounding a bit woo-woo, I'm a Soul Coach and I love to find/create meaning in everyday moments. For me, writing with a fountain pen brings a sense of sacredness and being grounded in a world full of chaos, like a writing meditation.

[Cyclopentadiene]

For many reasons, but other than that stated above;

 

I have many ballpoint pens. I have a few fountain pens.

 

All my fountain pens have character of some kind. I like all of them. At some point in my rotation I use them all.

 

I like very few of my ballpoint pens and use them only out of necessity.

 

Evidently the character element means alot to me.

[GabrielleDuVent]

Very interesting question and discussion, thanks for starting it, Gabrielle!

 

As a fountain pen writes much more smoothly than a ballpoint, I always write longhand with a fountain pen, which helps me to get into the flow. When my writing is fluent, my thinking becomes more fluent too.

 

Fountain pens match my romantic notion of being a writer, sitting in a cafe with notebook, dreaming and writing.

 

I love discovering new inks and writing in colors that are brilliant and alive, which makes fountain pens perfect. I also love the fact that this makes me a bit different from most people around me. We all want to be unique in one way or another.

 

And, at the risk of sounding a bit woo-woo, I'm a Soul Coach and I love to find/create meaning in everyday moments. For me, writing with a fountain pen brings a sense of sacredness and being grounded in a world full of chaos, like a writing meditation.

 

Don't fear of sounding "woo-woo", we have all walks of people on here (well, I've yet to see a McDonald's burger flipper on here, but you never know!). Writing is quite a meditative process for me, and in a way, writing is finding meaning in everyday moments. Writers have magnified everyday happenings (Truman Capote, for instance) into a drama, showing us that we have these moments every day in our lives, but we just don't pay enough attention to realise it.

 

I think using a fountain pen is a similar thing. Yes, a pen's a pen, but we seek and find more meanings to our pens, attach more of ourselves to them, than just to a disposable ballpoint. So a pen becomes more than a pen, just as walking by someone becomes more than just "walking by", but a brief snapshot of life that has much more nuances than what it first seems.

 

I'm not sure why, but I just can't do that with rollerballs. Maybe it's because with fountain pens we have people who dedicate their lives to customising nibs. With ballpoints, one can't have that.

[misslucy107]

 

Don't fear of sounding "woo-woo", we have all walks of people on here (well, I've yet to see a McDonald's burger flipper on here, but you never know!). Writing is quite a meditative process for me, and in a way, writing is finding meaning in everyday moments. Writers have magnified everyday happenings (Truman Capote, for instance) into a drama, showing us that we have these moments every day in our lives, but we just don't pay enough attention to realise it.

 

I think using a fountain pen is a similar thing. Yes, a pen's a pen, but we seek and find more meanings to our pens, attach more of ourselves to them, than just to a disposable ballpoint. So a pen becomes more than a pen, just as walking by someone becomes more than just "walking by", but a brief snapshot of life that has much more nuances than what it first seems.

 

I'm not sure why, but I just can't do that with rollerballs. Maybe it's because with fountain pens we have people who dedicate their lives to customising nibs. With ballpoints, one can't have that.

 

Also, writing with a fountain pen feels more like a ritual than writing with a ballpoint. Maybe it's because of the flow of the pen, or maybe it's just my emotional attachment to it, but writing with a fountain pen just feels different than writing with a ballpoint. Maybe knowing that I will (hopefully) still use my fountain pens 30, 40 or 50 years from now adds to that feeling as well. I've always preferred quality over quantity, in chocolate and clothes and as it seems also in pens

[ethernautrix]

Because I am special.

[cellmatrix]

Fountain pens provide me the opportunity to express my own individuality and make my unique mark upon the world.

 

Or maybe I write with them because I am just trying to copy ethernautrix.

 

Its one of those two things, I am sure

[Russ]

I write as an element of my profession. 20-30 pages per week, and up. FP's are best for the work. And, they're cool.