On my love for fountain pens
I got my first fountain pen when I was nine years old from a German Walmart. I had spent the summer before 4th grade in Europe because of my father’s job, and while I was there I convinced my parents to spend 10 Deutschmark on a zippered pencil case with included school supplies (this was also the best pencil case I’ve ever owned in my life and I’ve been chasing that high ever since, but I digress). It had the regular collection of things one might expect: pencil crayons, rulers, erasers. But it also contained a cheap fountain pen with several ink cartridges (I didn’t know this at the time, but German schools require students to use fountain pens).
I had never used a fountain pen before, but nine year old me used it all throughout 4th grade; writing school assignments with it, creating stories, until I finally used up my last ink cartridge. I have no idea what I did with that pen. It wasn’t special to me. Single-digit-old me simply used it as a writing tool because it was the one I had.
Fast forward over 20 years later and, at the suggestion of a few friends, I bought another fountain pen in November 2025: a creme and rose gold TWSBI Eco with a medium nib. I bought it mostly out of peer pressure, but another reason was to simply live a little. Why not try a different kind of pen? Why did my friends insist I try them out? It was a chance to see what the fuss was about. I didn’t expect owning a different type of pen would change my life in any meaningful way. But in a lot of ways it did.
What happened was it made writing fun. I was able to choose from a plethora of ink colours, sometimes augmented with glitter and metallic sheens. I could control line thickness by choosing different nib sizes. Plus, the added benefit of needing less pressure to write made it easier to write for longer periods. All of these little things made the writing experience feel less utilitarian and more like play. At the end of the day, when something is fun, you’ll simply keep doing it. Writing with a fountain pen was fun, so any excuse I could find to use the pens, I took.
Recently Hank Green released a video called “Don’t Follow Your Dreams, Follow Your Tools.” And while in that video he speaks of using tools in a different way than I interpret, I still resonate with that video title because ultimately following my tools has led me to an extremely productive year. I am over 2/3 through the first draft of my second novel. I’ve done (at the time of publishing this blog post) over 170 days of Korean studying. I’ve journaled every week of the year. I’ve created notebooks and printables and used them all to achieve various goals. All of this because I followed the tools that made me happy and brought me joy.
Over the past year I’ve bought more pens, more inks, more notebooks, and more paper. The pursuit of finding excuses and reasons to use these pens led to me doing more creative writing, journaling, memory keeping, and studying ever since taking up this interest. There is a large chunk of money I’ve sunk into this, but when I see how much it has impacted my life positively, I’m adverse to say these were frivolous purchases.
Achieving goals is hard. Trying to stay disciplined is hard. But sometimes something as simple as changing your pen can make all the difference.
