Editing The Pen Addict 488/transcript (section)

== Paper and Ink Contrast ==


'''Brad:''' And that, you know, that is visually easier on the eyes on this ivory-colored paper or cream-colored paper, I guess this probably is, than a graphite. So it comes from me wanting to see the words that I'm writing.

'''Myke:''' Yeah.

'''Brad:''' And you just kind of do it accidentally until I got about, I was really, I noticed it pretty quick. I was about halfway through the first page. I was like, huh. You know, like, the pencil itself is not bothering me, but my grip pressure is. So then I switched. I wanted to, I kind of doubled down. Right after that, I didn't go back to a fountain pen. I have the Tactile Turn Stealth pen that they sent me. We'll talk about that. Well, maybe I'll do a whole breakdown of that next week.

'''Brad:''' And it has a Pilot G2.7 millimeter refill. I was like, okay, let me go, let me see if my idea is correct, that it's just the pencil, and use a standard pen, right? A gel pen instead of a fountain pen. And I wrote three pages with that pen, no problem. So, and that had us a dark black ink. And it really was this idea of me forcing my hand onto the page to just get this darkness, you know? And it's like a subconscious thing, right? You don't notice you're doing it. Yeah. But your eyes are telling you as you're writing, it's like, I want to make sure this is dark enough for me to read. So, even if you're only writing with like 5% more pressure, anything like that changes how your hand and grip feels. So, yeah. I am going to try a wood case pencil soon just to see how that works for me. To see, am I going to have like the same feelings of like intensity on my hand pressure as I'm writing. Because I'll choose a little bit darker core, a little softer and darker core. And the wooden pencils are lighter anyway. And I can hold it a little bit further back. I don't know. I have a feeling that I'm going to get the same results, right? Because it's almost a subconscious writing.

'''Brad:''' Separate from that, I learned two things about some fountain pens that I use. One, my Nakaya Piccolo and Kikio Blue has a stock EF nib. I can get 400 words a page on an A5 page without like any pressure at all. So, the day I used that, I only wrote three pages. But it was 1,200 words, which is kind of crazy if you think about it. You look at it, you don't think it's that much smaller than some of the other pages. But in totality, by the end of the page, that's what it came to be, right? Yeah. I actually noticed it. But, you know, I'm just kind of freewheeling my word counts, right? I'm not counting my page. I did an estimate in the beginning. And I get just over 300 words a page, no matter what pen or nib size I've been using. But this one was noticeably smaller. So, I made a point to stop and count. And like the first page I counted was like 408 words. And the second page I counted was like 410 words. I was like, wow, I guess I get 400 words a page in there. So, I did allocate for that when I was adding.

'''Brad:''' The most recent pen I used, and this gets into the broader topic of what am I learning.

'''Brad:''' As I'm doing this, I'm learning I'm enjoying switching pens and inks a lot, right? But I don't do that on a day-to-day basis because I'm not writing this many words necessarily in a consistent fashion. So, the last pen I've used was the Pilot Custom 823.

'''Brad:''' And mine has a fine nib that I had ground into, a cursive italic nib. And this is the best pen I've used so far. It feels great in the hand when you're writing with it. It's like well-balanced. It's not too heavy. It's not too light. I don't use it posted, obviously. The vacuum mechanism. You're a monster. Yeah, I'm not a monster. I don't like that.

'''Brad:''' So, the vacuum mechanism gives it a little bit of added weight, but not too much to where it's a heavy pen. The grip section and barrel threads are all very soft. It's hard to describe how that feels, but it's a smooth, slightly tapered section. The grip threads don't get in the way. It's just exceedingly comfortable. And the nib, this is the first nib I've used, the first modified nib I've used, right? I've used all... Oh, what is this? So, it's a fine nib, but I had it ground into a cursive italic, right? So, it's a little bit squared off, but still small, right? Like, my words are small. I haven't taken any pictures of these recently, but I'll take... I have some catch-up pictures to put on with, like... I'm going to do the Nakaya and the 823 and the pencil, just to show some of the differences that I've had. Because I've been kind of keeping track of some of my favorites as I go. And this 823, I could write the entire book with this 823. I see why this is... I mean, we already know it's such a popular pen, and it's a pen that I rave about, and it's a pen that I love. But I love it because I heard so many good things from other people who were using it before me. And, you know, this is the Neil Gaiman pen that, you know, a lot of people talk about. Like, he writes some of his work with, and it's just good. It's just good. I dare to say it's probably one of the best bang for your buck pens on the market, even though it's, like, very expensive. You know, it's around $300, give or take, I believe. I don't know if the price has really increased. I just haven't looked. But based on all the other prices of other things increasing, this becomes almost best pen in any category for, like, a hardcore fountain pen user. Like, it's just that good, that quality of a product. So I've been loving that. So that's led me into kind of the last little topic on NaNoWriMo, and that's the using of things. And I am just searching. Not searching. Searching is the wrong word. I am just avidly going through my collection of pens and wanting to ink up literally everything that I have. But I ran into a problem, Myke. I pulled a trick straight from the Myke Harley playbook. I went to ink up a pen. I was like, oh, look at this.

'''Myke:''' I'm already unhappy with the categorization of this. You inked up the pen, and it was perfect, and you loved it, and you had a great time, and everyone was happy.

'''Brad:''' It didn't exactly go that way. So I was like, oh, I haven't inked up my 1911 standard tangerine. So the small 1911 tangerine in a while. And I've always loved that smaller size pen, right? It's a great writing pen. So I was like, okay, this one's going into the rotation. So when I got the 823, I pulled out the Montegrappa Mia, which is about to go in the rotation, and then I pulled out the 1911, which I wanted to ink up. So I unscrewed it, go to ink it up, and guess what I find? A converter stained with dried out ink that I somehow stored without cleaning, which I never, ever, ever do. I don't do that. And all I could think about was this is one of Myke's pens that he's left inked for a year. This is unacceptable. And just like now I know how you feel. I never have this, though.