Pen & Ink
I have always been interested in all things literary - including the craft of how writers... write. I compose primarily on a computer keyboard (preferably on my much beloved MacBook Pro), but am intrigued with all the ways that writers get their words down. Pen and ink holds a particular cachet. Partly because of its accessibility. Partly because of its aesthetics (few things are as pleasurable as a series of well-formed sentences, written by hand). But also because of its history.
While browsing the internet in late 2008, I came across a close-up image of a Moleskine notebook with a fountain pen laying in the crease of the spine. Now I hadn't used a fountain pen since elementary school - when you could still buy them for a buck or two, along with a bottle of ink or a few ink cartridges, at the school store. They hadn't struck me as particularly interesting back then. And frankly I hadn't given them a thought in all the years since. But I found something about that image intriquing. A few weeks later I had in hand the same model pen (a Pelikan M200). And in the weeks and months that followed I became more and more enamored of the niche world of fountain pens and inks.
Like many non-fountain-pen people, Montblanc was the one pen brand I had heard of. Expensive, ostentatious, and something I would never own. Or so I thought...
Writing with a good fountain pen can be magic.