Writing with a fountain pen as a creativity tool

[vivdunstan]

Just wrote about this on my personal academic blog. Spreading the fountain pen love and all!

 

[inkstainedruth]

I found that when I started using fountain pens (originally just for journaling -- having a "nice" pen got me into the habit of writing daily, and even as a kid I always equated "fountain pens" with "quality writing instruments") I then started writing poetry (for the first time in several decades) and have been participating in NaPoWriMo for several years at this point; and I am now also trying my hand at fiction -- getting the ideas in my head (which I can only describe as "a movie playing in my head") down on paper is just easier on paper.  I also did "Inktober" one year (a drawing a day for the month of October, the way NaPoWriMo is a poem a day for the month of April).  

I can compose email and posts on the computer okay, but anything more than that I get bogged down by "formatting"-- stuff like: "what font do I want to use?";  "How much space between lines -- single or double?"; and even stuff as mundane as "Can I get the stupid center header field to center the text this time?"  But when I take up a pen and a notebook or even just paper clipped to a clipboard, that all goes away.  I might have a half-dozen arrows pointing to marginalia that I remembered I wanted to say after the fact and stuff like that is SOOOO much easier to do with pen and paper than on a keyboard or even a touch screen.  I can cram lots of detail into a small space (I write small).  And I can just write and worry about the formatting stuff later when transcribing/editing it.

I am just not tech savvy enough to do artwork on the computer (and those sorts of programs are quite expensive -- whereas a smallish notebook or sketch pad and a decent pen for drawing with is a LOT cheaper -- even the really (for me) expensive pens.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

[ParramattaPaul]

7 hours ago, vivdunstan said:

Just wrote about this on my personal academic blog. Spreading the fountain pen love and all!

 

Interesting article, Viv.  Thank you for writing something that will occupy my thoughts -- points to ponder -- for most of the day.

[ParramattaPaul]

Viv,

There were four points raised in your blog article for me to ponder.  They were:

·         that there would be a better continuation of one’s thoughts because,

·         there were fewer distractions,

·         one could/would compose without editing at the same time,

·         and that writing by hand and then processing was faster.

I, like you, have used word to compose what I write.  I still do.  I gave up drafting what I write when word processing came along for a number of reasons.  Not the least of those is because I am left-handed and was an over-writer.  Writing anything longer than one or two paragraph became a painful ordeal.  Much relief has come from training myself to become an under-writer.   Then too, my mind seems to work fast with a rapid-fire flow of thoughts, which forced me to write very quickly.  The result of that was and is a barely legible scribble.  Writing by hand was reserved for note-taking at meetings and during study sessions when I can take time to write slowly and more carefully.

As I said earlier, I needed to ponder the above.  I also wanted to take the time to try handwriting this reply.  That attempt resulted in a page of hastily scribbled notes of essentially three paragraphs – none as articulate as this – and using it as an outline to compose, simultaneously edit, and then proofread what you see here in Word. 

Simply put, what I have done was make one first, feeble attempt and not a test. 

Your article has produced one positive.  It has encouraged me to spend more time trying to compose by hand.  Thank you for that.

[vivdunstan]

Thanks both for the replies. Lots of interesting ideas there!

 

Again as I said I don’t think drafting by hand would suit all. But having tried word processing for years (since the 1980s, and being a rapid self taught touch typer) I’m definitely finding it a good alternative to typing into the computer.

 

And it is very much a welcome excuse to use my fountain pens more 😜

[Azkim Rikschum]

I agree with many people that a nice pen stimulates more creativity than the computer

as far as pens are concerned, I discovered that fountain pens and semi-similar things like rollerballs are worse than ballpoints from that point of view because they use a liquid ink that has its own (albeit short) drying time. That is, using them, let's say I can access 95% of my theoretical creativity coefficient, with a nice ballpoint I can reach 100 because I can write in a direct line connecting my brain to the pen as if it were a single system, since no fraction of it has to deal with drying.
Fountain pens and Rollers are good for me in all those applications where you have to "think before you write", that is, anything that involves copying an already drafted text, or writing a short message, or a poem or a letter or anything related to physics and mathematics, graphs, that is, things that must be processed by the brain a few seconds before being written. But the "stream of consciousness" mode for me can be triggered at 100% only with a good ballpoint (which should not be seen as the devil, because good ones write immensely better than the ones common people use).

 

These are subjective opinions of course. Also, I'm a lefty, so take that into account.

...and in any case, when it comes to being creative, aesthetics matter less.

So even if liquid ink is more beautiful, without doubts; in that situation, it's the content that counts.