Tech rec: fountain pen

Writing without friction

I have been having problems with my fountain pen. It is scratching out nothing — stuttering and stalling like a tired old BIC. Every 90 words or so, I am forced to partially disassemble the thing so I can dip the nib in the clogged cartridge. Every 500 words or so, a black tear wells at the joint; drops. I treat this splotch like a reservoir at the center of the page until the paper rips. I'm not doing a very good job recommending this thing, am I?

My Lamy Safari just needs a good cleaning. Its performance issues stand out because they're unusual. Normally, writing with a fountain pen is easy. As any enthusiast will tell you, you hardly apply any pressure at all. Words flow from mind to page with minimal friction.

Digital minimalists and user experience designers and tech service journalists use "friction” to refer to the blips of frustration or hesitation we feel when we encounter a minor obstacle. Loading screens, pop-ups, "next" buttons. When we see them, we click away. Sometimes, we intentionally harness this force to prevent ourselves from spending too much time staring at a screen. Apple Screen Time features, mindfulness apps, dumbphones.

But friction was physical first.¹ If we can add friction to make the digital world less appealing, can we remove friction to make the physical world more appealing?

Consider writing with pen and paper. It is an uncomfortable mental process. Some writers describe an effortless flow state. I'm not sure I've ever experienced this; every word is a pain. It can be an uncomfortable physical process, too. I find writing with a ballpoint pen excruciating. It sinks into the paper and leaves no trace. I press harder. My hand cramps. Writing is hard enough without the pen fighting back!

A fully functioning fountain pen does not fight you. It works best when trusted; as the how-to guides will tell you, you must not press. Ink flows.

Of course, if friction was the only factor, we might not write on paper at all. The fountain pen is no match for, say, the Notes app.

So it is important that writing with a fountain pen involves not just the removal of friction but the addition of pleasure. I mean, it's fun! It's fun to write in pretty, flowy script. Fun to pick out pretty inks and paper heavy enough to hold them.

The glossy surface of a smartphone can never match the tactile pleasure of stationery. You can customize a word processor's font size and colour, but you simply can't nerd out over it — not the way the good people at r/FountainPens do over shades of ink. (Wet or dry? Matte or shimmery?)

There is a commodity fetishism to all this. Ink costs money, stationery costs money, fountain pens cost money. When I write in public, people react with something like "ooh, fancy." And it's true that fountain pens and places to write in them are little luxuries in my life. From time to time, I wander through stationery shops, picking up and putting down expensive notebooks. I spent actual money on a pen pal club membership. I own a wax seal.

That said, my Lamy Safari cost something like £30; the ink less than £10. In the years I've used it I could have bought and thrown away dozens of ballpoint pens. The costs of digital writing are just as real as the tally on my Choosing Keeping receipt. They may be harder to calculate. They may be hidden.² We may not be the ones who bear them. Who pays for the water that cools the servers that store my old college essays?

I think the fountain pen is worth it. I think that objects that draw us from the digital world into the physical usually are. For years, the first thing I reached for in the morning was a cell phone. Now, on a good day, it is a pen.

1. Digital resistance so often circles back to an original concept. I recently heard about a "social media in real life" event where each guest invites another friend until the room is full of mutual connections, a la Facebook "people you may know." A party. That is called a party.

2. Low Tech Magazine published an interesting comparison of the environmental costs of online vs. print publishing.