Paper for pencil is a interesting subject, and far less complex than fountain pens.

What I look for in a good paper for a pencil is neither too slick or too gritty. The former means the graphite won’t stick well to the paper and you just smear graphite all over, while the latter means that you’ll be grinding down the pencil much faster than you should.

My two go to papers in general is LT1917 and Rhodia.

I try not to get too into the hype of new products and colors and all of that bullshit.

Here is my process:

• When I see something interesting I collect it and add it to a list
• Once a month I look over it and delete stuff I no longer have any interest in
• Then I try to look for stuff on that list that would sove something for me right now
• When I see a fit I add a due date to it. Typically 2 or 3 weeks. If I still feel like a want it after that time I buy it

This system is in place to solve multiple problems for me. It makes it easy to collect all kinds of cool crap. And I can just get rid of all the stuff that looked interesting but isn’t. And then I can follow my principle of only buying stuff that I have a use for. The 2-3 weeks between deciding to get it and doing it is just to keep myself from buying stuff that I thought was a really awesome idea this week but had moved away from in 10 days.

Pencils are not the most practical writing instruments. You need to sharpen them, and most likely on the go if you bring them anywhere. This is probably a running theme with the kind of writing instruments I like. If I’m not using a pencil it is most likely a fountain pen.

What I like about pencils is how many different options there are. Most of what I use are the top end or “premium” market. They are very different in every single way from the stuff I learned to hate in school.

They look different, feel different., perform different and sharpen cleaner than the stuff I used.

My preference is smooth and dark lines. But I also like pencils I don’t have to sharpen that much. What kind I usually end up picking depends a little on what I’m doing. Usually softer for taking notes. While harder if I’m writing long form.

No matter what you are looking for there are many different aspects you can use to pick pencils. Price, colors / looks, how the “core” feels etc.

I don’t like scratchy pencils (or pens for that matter) so that excludes a lot of the market from the kind of stuff I’m going to check out. That doesn’t mean they are bad, and there are probably a lot of cool stuff there if you are into that kind of stuff.

I’m a stationery person that come from the using it and not the collector perspective.

Most of us end up buying stuff you don’t end up liking or using for what ever reason. It might be that you didn’t like it after all or that you were into something for a long time but found something that worked better or that you got it for a use case you no longer have. The reason for it isn’t that important.

Here is my process for this, it is more of a process I use for everything in my apartment. I try to do this every couple of months. I collect everything that is either junk or stuff I don’t feel is necessary. The latter is usually things I never use and don’t have any emotional attachment to. I just put it all in a giant pile in the middle of my kitchen / living room.

Then I first sort out all the junk and put it in bags and throw it out. Then I put the rest in bags and tape a piece of paper with a date on it and put it in my storage unit.

I usually throw stuff out because I don’t want to deal with selling a ink bottle or $20 pen. Seems like too much of a hassle. It would be different for a $100 pen. You may have different reasons for doing things differently.

Now. Two to three times I year I start with the stuff I’ve been storing for the longest without recovering it to my apartment and have been in the bag for at least six months and fit as much as possible of it in my car and throw it out.

I’m very much of the opinion that you should not keep stuff for sake of keeping it.

I got this pencil as a part of a free sample pack when I bought some other stuff from Tudos. Most of the other stuff was too artsy for me. But this pencil caught my eye. There is something awesome about a yellow pencil. I have no idea why, it just is.

Like most European pencils this one came pre-sharpened. I really hate that, because they I have to break off the point and sharpen it to how i like it to get a proper idea of what it is like.

I actually like this pencil a lot, and I think I might order more of it. It isn’t smooth like a Japanese or Blackwing. But it isn’t very scratchy either.

What I love about German pencils is how great the build quality is, and this one is no exception.

I got this pencil as a part of a free sample pack when I bought some other stuff from Tudos. Most of the other stuff was too artsy for me. But this pencil caught my eye. There is something awesome about a yellow pencil. I have no idea why, it just is.

Like most European pencils this one came pre-sharpened. I really hate that, because they I have to break off the point and sharpen it to how i like it to get a proper idea of what it is like.

I actually like this pencil a lot, and I think I might order more of it. It isn’t smooth like a Japanese or Blackwing. But it isn’t very scratchy either.

What I love about German pencils is how great the build quality is, and this one is no exception.

This is my creative process for this site

Ideas

I have a giant list of ideas that I add new ones to. Either as I get them, but most of them comes from when I sit down to write ideas. The latter is a process where I sit down and don’t get up until I have 20 new ideas.

Drafting

All of my writing goes in phases. Typically intense idea phases, them intense drafting phases and then I use 2-3 times that actually finishing and publishing posts. Like when I started this site I did almost all of the ideas and drafting for the first year during July and August 2021.

I draft all of them on paper. I just write the idea, remove it from the list and move on to the next one.

Transcribing

First I read what I wrote on paper. Sometimes I transcribe it as is, other times I just take the basic ideas and re-write it as I transcribe. If I hate it I just skip it and re-add the idea to the list

Scheduling

I schedule posts in advance, typically not more than 1-2 months in advance. The way I do it is that I decide to do all the posts for May and I usually first pick two or three drafts, edit them and add them to the CMS with the correct dates a day until a month is done. Sometimes the editing of drafts is an entire re-write other times I just ditch it and re-add the idea to the list.

This workflow works great for me, because there are enough space between each stage so I don’t remember what I wrote and can be honest about it. As I’m writing this in early March 2022 I have scheduled all of March. And before mid March I will most likely have scheduled posts for April and May. And I’ll probably start on June and July in early May. I typically write new ideas when my list is empty. I start writing new drafts when I transcribe the last one, and I start transcribing when I run low on unpublished drafts.

All of these are kind of independent of each other and it is a really weird process that seems to work for me

Most of the time I use a pencil or a fountain pen, and while not being perfect or that convenient in general they are when then are functioning as intended they just work. This is not something that is always true for other types of pens.

As I was writing with a gel ink pen more or less exclusively for like a week I discovered that it much more ink flow problems than I remember. Not a big issue most of the time. But I often write some, scribble in the margin while thinking or being bored to death in a meeting. Draw a scare and color it in and stuff like that. The gel ink pen didn’t keep up very well at this. Never been a issue with any of my fountain pens.

Same goes with pencil.

It have made me appriciate fountainpens a lot, and realize how great they are if you can accepet their weirdness.

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.