When you start writing with a fountain pen, this becomes a big question, especially if you like me are left handed.

The main factors that contributes to this is:

• The paper
• The ink
• The amount of ink the nib puts on the paper

A lot of lefties start to focus a lot on the dry time of the ink. This was where I started as well. I think it is because most online stores has a sub category in their ink sections for fast drying inks. This is however one of the least important factors for dry time in my opinion.

If you want fast dry time I think it is much better to focus on paper and using a pen that lays down less ink.

Less ink means less liquid that has to dry. Makes sense right? This isn’t really something for me, because I usually like nibs that are the oposite of this.

Paper. This is where I focus a lot. If you take a Rhodia or Tomoe River sheet of paper, most of the ink will kind of dry on the top of the page. This takes a while. If you take a LT1917 notebook if will be kind of a combination of drying on top and obsorbed into the paper. And the more you move into shitty paper the more it will soak it up. This is usually a bad thing for bleed through or feathering. But it has some positive sides too, because it will give you short dry time if the paper is thick enough to handle your nib.

I think it can be useful to think about this stuff in start of your fountain pen habit. I usually don’t anymore, because I have kind of learnt techniques where it doesn’t matter as much. If you really care about this I would consider both pen, ink and paper. If you care but not as much I’d thoroughly consider what matters the most for you. For me it was that I only cared about the pen in the start and then I started to care about the ink too. And slowly I got into a place where I didn’t care about dry time anymore.