Of FPs Retaining Their Use As Professional Tools For Writers.

[RitwijMishra]

While perusing through a recent thread instituted by @Vindiction, what @samasry opined quite succinctly about fountain pens actually being empiric tools in professional contexts beside being so in the private one did gladden me somewhat. 

 

I am grateful there still are those who take this view. Fountain pens have for decades in the history of humane or corporate or clerical or literary or psychagogic premise been sinews of the written word. To have one or more as a tool for either of these, or any other utilitarian ligature from an aspect of your living or life to another, is not quite unlike how it has been owned for decades in our otherwise ruggedly Groddeckian history, with polarizations among our behavioral premise and a faddist's pastiche.  

 

Writers used to own and - contrary to what is now typically believed - did use for literary composition their pens - fountain pens, invariably - not significantly less than they used typewriters or pencils for the same. We modern writers are too habitual of using specialist word processors like the one by Literature and Latte - with their ease of layout metadata, outlining and line-editing - exclusively to realize that there used to be an age when Wolfe and Hemingway and Woolf and Merrill and Fleet Street's apparent progenies of Holderlin and Martial all had to have a pencil or a fountain pen and scraps of paper beside their typewriters, implying the inevitability of their use invariably along certain stages - or stages less certain - of the writing process. It is not to be denied that editorial meets and cold pitches and agent submissions never were deemed practical without a typewritten copy, but the typewritten copy oftener than not did not enjoy the privilege of being the sole copy, as our .docx files now largely do. 

 

It therefore is an anamnesis of sorts for us writers to have a regard for our fountain pens less as a (harmlessly and joyfully) drooling hobbyist's fiddle and more as a (desired) professional tool of (desirable) habit as less reliant as regards relish on the flippant Calliope as is our own psychagogia. 

 

Do we have writers here? Do you find one, or possibly more, fountain pens in your ownership as being true implements of verse or Fichtean curve? 

 

[silverlifter]

Dafts (2-3): fountain pens. Polished draft to final (2+¹) vim + LaTeX. Finished product: pandoc -> required format.

 

_{1. Polishing can involve printing PDF -> paper and then marking up the pages with a fountain pen before going back to the keyboard.}

[Aether]

Why use a common term when an obscure one will do?

 

After consulting my thesaurus it is with confidence that I can assert to being puzzled, confused, bewildered, befuddled or perplexed. 😕 (thought I should include an emoji seeing as we are reverting back to hieroglyphics)

 

 

 

 

[gyasko]

1 hour ago, silverlifter said:

Dafts (2-3): fountain pens. Polished draft to final (2+¹) vim + LaTeX. Finished product: pandoc -> required format.

 

_{1. Polishing can involve printing PDF -> paper and then marking up the pages with a fountain pen before going back to the keyboard.}

 

 

Same, but with emacs & aucTeX instead of vim and no pandoc

[jandrew]

1 hour ago, silverlifter said:

Dafts (2-3): fountain pens. Polished draft to final (2+¹) vim + LaTeX. Finished product: pandoc -> required format.

 

_{1. Polishing can involve printing PDF -> paper and then marking up the pages with a fountain pen before going back to the keyboard.}

Similarly here --- drafting / composing with fountain pens, then editors and LaTeX (or more often these days, just Markdown) and pandoc.

[silverlifter]

23 minutes ago, gyasko said:

Same, but with emacs

 

Pistols at dawn!

[Bo Bo Olson]

Ball points hurt and cause hand fatigue.

Fountain pens don't................so any professional that writes does himself a favor by using a fountain pen, than plowing the south forty with out the mule in use of a ball point.

[samasry]

10 hours ago, Bo Bo Olson said:

Ball points hurt and cause hand fatigue.

Fountain pens don't................so any professional that writes does himself a favor by using a fountain pen, than plowing the south forty with out the mule in use of a ball point.

 

 

I agree with What he said  ^^^^     

 

[ENIAC]

I once tried writing a short story with a FP, but it was a joke because I never get stories right the first time.  It became a quagmire, fast.  Enough self-flagellation and inefficiency, I said.  Now I use OpenOffice when I need formatted text, and vi for plain text or text that needs only minimal formatting.  I started using vi back when I entered the UNIX world, and just stayed with it.  But I have the highest regard for the emacs users.  Couple of guys I used to work with knew emacs as well as I know vi, and it was really impressive to watch how much they could get done in a short time.

[Bo Bo Olson]

10 hours ago, ENIAC said:

I never get stories right the first time. 

A story needs to be written three times. The second draft throws out half the garbage of the first draft and tools are added. The third draft tosses half the garbage of the second draft....and the set point may have to be written a forth time.

 

That one may write only once is a fallacy.

 

Frederick Schiller Faust (May 29, 1892 – May 12, 1944) was an American author known primarily for his Western stories using the pseudonym Max Brand. He wrote some 300 or so books under very many different names and did not re-write his paperback  westerns....

He the only one I know who didn't re-write............even the buy and leave at the airport books were re-written.

 

 

[gyasko]

I should have included my editing process because yes, that’s an essential part of writing and fountain pens are involved there, too.

 

I start composing with double broads, stubs or italics almost always with blue black ink. After typing a laTeX draft, i print out a paper copy and go back to fountain pens for more editing.  I usually use xf nibs and pink ink for editing.  

[Sailor Kenshin]

I always write my first drafts and notes and inserts with fountain pens.  And ink!  📓 ✒️ 🗒

[ENewton]

I use a fountain pen for drafting narrative components and a computer for drafting dialogue scenes.  

[Mech-for-i]

Well not just writers , anyone who are tasked with coming up with some plan, creation, etc ... know the process is drawn out and sometime random and going all over the place. A piece of paper with appropriate writing tools are far more useful than trying to electronically doing it. it does not even need to be something creative, it can be something much the other way round, say in my work as an engineer , a simple piece of paper and some scribbling , laying down work procedure, plan and so is a rather effective mean to convoy what need to be done to the field mechanics , and the customers too ...

 

Anytime any idea , plan, info, needing to be conveyed , the good old method of simply writing something up certainly do the job right. 

[sandy101]

On 7/23/2021 at 3:06 AM, silverlifter said:

 

Pistols at dawn!

 

Pistols are for ball point barbarians. The rapier is the tool of gentlefolk. 

 

Anthony Horowitz & Tom Stoppard use Caran D'ache as part of their writing processes. 

 

Neil Gaiman uses Lamy and a few others beside. 

 

Computers are very good at organising a manuscript - but (maybe it is a generational thing) I find it far easier to start with paper.

 

Writing to me is - you start by making a big mess, and then with every draft you tidy it up until eventually you get the final version in a saleable format (usually digital). 

 

A sculptor starts with a block of wood and carves out the bits that don't look like a horse. 

 

A writer has to make the block first, and then carve out the bits that don't look like the story.  

 

[jandrew]

1 hour ago, Mech-for-i said:

Well not just writers , anyone who are tasked with coming up with some plan, creation, etc ... know the process is drawn out and sometime random and going all over the place. A piece of paper with appropriate writing tools are far more useful than trying to electronically doing it. ...

Absolutely --- not merely for recording and/or conveying information, but generating information. Pads of graph paper are my thought processors, be it mapping out a sequence in a story scene or working out a datastructure/algorithm problem in half code, half diagram, and half prose (I know, that's three halves, but there's overlap, and entanglement, and other mysterious forces at work).

[inkstainedruth]

I tried writing fiction on my laptop but ended up spending too much time and effort futzing with formatting.  Whereas, I can often write several pages on paper with a fountain pen (and I write small and tend to do two lines per printed line on the page in composition books, even the college ruled ones), because it just flows better -- even when I've forgotten something I meant to say so there could be stuff above the line, or a circled area in the margin with arrows where it's supposed to go.  Second drafts/editing get done on the laptop.

I did (years ago in college) write first drafts of poetry in some of my writing classes on a manual typewriter.  But now?  I generally have at least a small notebook in my purse to jot down ideas (and composed one on the bus one time).

@Mech-for-i-- my husband is a software engineer, and is also dyslexic.  But he will nearly always do first designs on paper with a pen (I just can't seem to be able to wean him off the Zebra G pens he likes).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[sandy101]

But he will nearly always do first designs on paper with a pen (I just can't seem to be able to wean him off the Zebra G pens he likes)

 

The good news is that he's not messing up (or losing) your precious fountains pens. 

 

There's a reason why wedding vows do not mention Nakayas...  

[inkstainedruth]

Well, since a Nakaya is completely out of my price range (not to mention the fact that I'm so allergic to the stuff that urushi is made from) that wouldn't be an issue.  

Of course the pens that are for him are *designated* as such (the older Vanishing Point with the replacement EF nib assembly, the red Vintage Estie J with his choice of nib -- I suspect he'd probably really like an 8440 Superfine nib, but those are rarer than hens' teeth and priced accordingly  -- and the black 51 Aero with a lovely smooth EF nib that Pendleton Brown sold me at my second pen show).  

That's not counting the three pens he bought at that antiques fair a couple of years for $4 US each; I wish I knew where they were: I want to find out what model the Waterman is, and I want to do side-by-side color comparisons of the Parker 51 Demi with my full size Teal and Midnight Blue Aeros so I know what the color is....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[sandy101]

I'm sure if you post pictures of the three unknown pens, someone will be able to identify them.