Handwriting Ramblings 2: A quick update

I’m assuming you all gave a sigh of relief when you saw digital text rather than scans of my handwriting. This post is largely a set of updates and corrections to my previous post; given the lack of revisions I have some corrections to make. Beyond that, the lack of reflection on my thoughts during the editing process had me coming to realizations after hitting post, alongside a few misc updates.

Corrections

Turns out, sharing a minimally revised draft is bound to need some corrections eventually. Who’d of thunk that revising and checking your statements was an important part of writing? Anyway, I figured there was a few things worth pointing out or correcting.

First is prices. At Walmart Pilot G2 refills now cost $3.99 instead of $1.98. See my rant below. Parker Quink gel ink used to cost $6 for a two pack, not for a single refill as the wording implied - although they now cost $9 for a 2 pack and $6 for a single refill on Amazon. The oil based Parker Quink refills are, and have been, much cheaper than the gel version. That said, a very cursory Amazon search revealed a number of generic Parker compatible gel refills for less than $1 a piece, and bulk official Pilot G2 refills for around $1 a piece. I have no idea how well the generic refills write, but they’re certainly worth considering. I wound up ordering some similar generic refills - again, see my rant below.

Beyond prices, something else worth clarifying is my wording when I called distractions an “OS problem.” A better wording would have been calling it a software or configuration problem. Disabling notifications or using services in a browser instead of native apps works on Android (de-googled or not), IOS, Windows, Linux, and Mac. I can give my opinions on the operating systems as a whole, but that’s irrelevant to the fact you can avail yourself of distractions pretty equally across any OS if you find yourself distracted while using them.

Pilot G2 Refill Rant

With writing implements on my mind, and having just used my second to last Pilot G2 refill, I figured I’d pick up some spares next time I was in Walmart. Having trouble finding them at that particular Walmart I checked their site, and to my surprise, Pilot G2 refills now cost $3.99, and are out of stock in both Walmarts near me. The confusing thing isn’t that some things went up in price, but that only the refills did. Its still $2.99 to buy a 2 pack of Pilot G2 pens! Who in the world thought it would make sense to sell pen refills for considerably more than brand new pens that contain that same refill? I’m too stubborn to make the rational choice of just treating the G2s as disposable, since it feels wrong throwing away a perfectly good pen that just ran out of ink.

So, instead of buying more pens, I’m buying more pens. Yeah, I never said I was being rational, only stubborn. Specifically, I went on AliExpress and bought three: a brass bolt action pen (identical to the one I lost), a Parker Jotter clone, and a fancier one that looks almost like a Montblanc. I also wound up buying some unbranded gel ink refills compatible with both Parker and Pilot pens. The refills are incredibly cheap, though I won’t exactly know how well they work until they actually come in and I can test them.

Editing me: the Parker gel refills came in. They seem to write fine, though I don’t have a working Parker style pen yet for more in depth testing.

As mentioned in the corrections section, I also found some much cheaper generic Parker gel inserts on Amazon, as well as the bulk Pilot refills. Again, revise your writings and check your assumptions, kids. I’ve got a feeling some Amazon and Aliexpress refills are from the same manufacturers, sold with more markup on Amazon than AliExpress, but it’s still worth noting that - at least in the US - you can get cheaper unbranded refills rather quickly for both pen standards. Again, exactly how well the pens and pen inserts actually perform is yet to be seen, but I’m looking forward to trying them out. In the meantime, though, it’s not like I’m completely out of Pilot ink yet. I’ve still got at least one black 0.7mm refill, as well as at least 2 partially full 0.7mm black Pilots, 2 0.38mm black Pilots, and 5¹ 0.7mm blue Pilots.

Especially with multiple types of inks in the mail, I’m going to be set for quite a while.

Perhaps I Was Too Harsh on Fountain Pens

Perhaps, at least.

Ever since getting into stationery, my writing needs have changed twice. In college, not allowed to have electronics at work, I needed a means of taking notes, keeping a calendar, and outlining college essays (usually in bullet points). I rarely wrote more than a paragraph worth of words in any given writing session. Graduating college, my needs changed, and forgoing a paper calendar I only ever used notebooks for writing. My writings were fairly broad - a hastily scribbled network diagram or floor layout, the odd blog post outline or journel entry, and a couple dozen chapters of the first installment of the Untitled Novel. Still, though, most sessions involved less than one full sized sheet’s worth of words in a single session (Untitled Novel chapters being an exemption).

After realizing Claude is good for transcriptions, however, that’s changed again. I can write out an entire blog post, snap a few pictures, and be handed a markdown file ready for revision instead of having to manually transcribe it - nearly halving the effort of a hand written first draft. A change in needs probably warrants re-assessing fountain pens. Checking my stash of old pens, I realized I had two fountain pens instead of the one I mentioned in my previous post: my original being a black-with-gold-accents Baoer, the other a transparent green Jinhao. Cleaning and fiddling around with the pens got them both working again, though with some minor flow issues.

Some of the benefits of fountain pens are more applicable to me for my current writing needs. The minor smoothness upgrade from gel pens becomes more relevant if I’m going to regularly write 1k+ words in a sitting, and the time it might take to fiddle with the pen or get ink flowing suddenly takes up a much smaller percentage of my writing session. I’m also not finding my fountain pen handwriting as bad as I remembered. Some of that might just be a case of “well it can’t really get any worse” - though I wouldn’t be surprised if using gel pens for 5 years got me much better with fountain pens. And, of course, there’s still the ritual and customization. It’s still nice, in theory, to do all the rituals of using a fountain pen. And while I’ve only ever used one bottle of black ink, I found a small $0.99 bottle of green ink on AliExpress that I’m interested in trying. Only time will tell how well it actually works, but the ability to use all forms of ink and pen styles is certainly a draw.

Still, it’s not all sunshine and rainbow colored ink. Both pens are very finicky with what angle you hold them in. The Jinhao writes with light gray lines and the nib runs dry if I write too fast. The Baoer dries out when left unattended (I assume the cap isn’t sealing right) and each session requires me to force ink back into the nib to get it flowing. I had to change notebooks² because the one I originally started drafting this in was absorbing too much ink and running both pens dry (seperate from the Jinhao running dry on any paper when writing too fast).

Even setting aside the issues of 5+ year old budget pens, there’s still some more universal issues that won’t go away with a more premium pen. These words are ghosting through the back of my cheap paper, and I’ve got ink stains on my hands from filling/cleaning the pens yesterday as well as troubleshooting the pens’ ink flow now. I probably won’t bring fountain pens to my desk at work where I’ll have to deal with the logistics of trying to troubleshoot or re-fill pens away from home. I definitely won’t be carrying fountain pens - at least these pens - around in my backpack when I’m traveling to other facilities. Last, I don’t ever foresee myself reaching for a fountain pen to quickly jot something down.

Still, I may have been too harsh on fountain pens. Not necessarily on the complaints about their cons - those still exist - but in the rubric I used to decide whether or not they’re a tool for me. This foray back into fountain pens cost me nothing but some inky fingers and a $0.99 impulse purchase. I’ll probably continue to use them on and off over the next few weeks and decide whether it’s worth keeping them in rotation or putting them in a box to sit for another half decade until I get the urge to try them again. Expect an update in another blog post in the future.

Pen Philosophy Change

You might be thinking “Oh, he can’t possibly have more to ramble on about writing implements.” Yes, you bewildered hypothetical reader, I have more rambling to do.

Anyway, to wrap this up, I had a few more pen thoughts to share. In my previous post I mentioned liking the Parker gel ink slightly more than Pilot gel ink, but going with Pilot ink for cheapness and ease of acquiring. Although there’s also another factor that had me defaulting to Pilots: they’re sorta a mix between disposable and re-usable. In a sense it’s the best of both: it’s a nice pen to write with, and I’d prefer not throwing it away when I’m out of ink, but it’s not too disappointing if one gets lost. If it winds up being forgotten in the bottom of my backpack, or left at work, no worries; it’ll probably show up eventually and I’ll grab a similar pen from my stash in the meantime. If it’s truly lost, I’m not too attached to that specific pen, and ironically now it might be cheaper to just replace the half used pen than buy a new ink refill.

Still, I do kinda miss having a nicer, more permanent pen. A pen with some stylization that I personally chose, and that feels less fungible to an equally capable Pilot G2³, has a certain physiological aspect to it compared to a well-built-and-refillable-but-generic Pilot G2. I was a lot more disappointed when I lost the brass pen than when I lose a Pilot G2⁴, but that’s in part because it was a distinct pen I’d used on and off for years as opposed to a random Pilot I may have written more words with overall. Like I mention above, I wound up ordering a couple different pens and refills, and am probably going to consider carrying one of them in place of a Pilot.

Anyway, I guess that concludes the post. At some point I figure I’ll make one last post detailing my favorite pens and pencils, and what I default to carrying and using. I might also make a slash pages page full of short reviews of most pens, pencils, and notebooks I’ve tried using.