I know ordering things online is easier and you don’t have to leave the house. But if you need any kind of advice GO TO THE SHOP.
So I’m left-handed and quite a long time ago I figured out that ordinary pens don’t work for me. They are made to write well in a pulling motion - like righties write.
I’ve seen a lot of different ‘stances’ that lefties use. For the 'laying halfway across the table to write from the top down’ stance, pens might work. I suppose that is a pulling motion. I use the 'hand below text and write from the bottom up’ stance. Which is most definitely a pushing motion. Like, so:
As you can see, I also hold the pen very close to the tip. As is also obvious now, I use fountain pens whenever I have the choice - Basically always apart from work where I am not allowed to bring a fountain pen due to hygiene issues (I’m a lab tech).
Since I have been working a lot lately, I decided to get a good fountain pen. Like, a really nice one. So I went to the stationary shop and asked for advice and the lady was extremely nice.
When I saw the prices I told her straight up that I wouldn’t get a really expensive one (the most expensive I saw was 950$). She said not to worry about that and that I should go ahead and try writing with it anyway. She let me write with the fanciest pens she had and daaaamn if I were a professional writer I’d invest in one of those. But I’m not. In the end I got a fountain pen that sat well in my hand and was neither too thin, nor too heavy. It cost me 150$. Some might say that’s too much, but a fountain pen literally lasts you a lifetime if you treat it well.
The best thing is that it made my day. I was really excited to get that pen and I’ve always used cheap ones till now and those break, mostly the clip not the pen itself. It is annoying nonetheless.
It also made the sellers day though. She was super nice and honestly excited. She said I was her first lefty, after like 20 years of working there! She was fascinated by my 'tiny cursive script’ and was extremely sorry that they didn’t have the narrower tips anymore. Apparently, the demand had been too low. She also told me apart from the cheap ones for the school kids, she sells maybe 40 fountain pens a year.
I had also picked up a notebook to use later. When she saw it, she told me immediately that I should not get that one if I wanted to use it with fountain pen, since it would most definitely bleed through. She advised me a Leuchtturm - I know those and they don’t bleed through.
(I mostly know Leuchtturm notebooks because I saw an interview with @neil-gaiman and he spoke a bit about the material he uses. I wholeheartedly agree with his statement that it is maybe too easy to hit a high word count if you write on the computer.)
It was just a nice uplifting experience! I’ll go back to that shop whenever I need advice.
kaledo-art
janainaart
snowghoul
germansingergirl
jbbartram-illu
