Jordan Colley

I've been writing in a journal daily now for about two years. After trying to journal many times in the past, I'm as surprised as anybody that I stuck with it this long. It took a lot of effort in the beginning, and it's interesting to see how short most of my early writing was. I was struggling to even come up with what to write about!

Once I got about six months into daily writing, the entries start to expand. I started to discover what I wanted to write about and actually allow myself to write about it. That second part was crucial. I also noticed that as the writing got longer, my hand started to cramp up before I felt like I was done getting my thoughts out on the page. That's when I discovered fountain pens.

I had no idea how much pressure I was putting on my ballpoint and gel pens when I was writing and how tiring that was for my hand. Fountain pens are a totally different writing experience. Very little pressure is needed to write, so I can write for as long as I want to without my hand cramping up. In fact, the limit is almost always what I have to say rather than how long my hand can keep writing.

I thought fountain pens were snooty and would require a lot of upkeep and care, but I haven't found that to be true. Are they slightly more involved than a ballpoint or gel pen? Sure they are, but it's relatively minimal. I got an inexpensive pen to start and quickly switched to using a converter so that I could fill the pen from bottled inks. Ink cartridges are less work, but I wanted the experience of choosing different inks and learning about the filling/cleaning process.

I can't overstate how much of a difference this pen switch has made in my writing journey. I thought it would be an unnecessary luxury, a hobby that I could indulge in. It is partly that, but it has transformed the process of writing into something I genuinely enjoy.