#12PenPersonQuestions

Sorry it's been so quiet here of late, folks! To help get back into the swing of things, I though I'd take part in the "12 Pen Person Questions" that Lisa from Olive Octopus Ink shared. She's great, so please check out her blog & streams, especially during the Relay for St. Jude fundraising going on during September. A huge thank you to her for providing a recording of her reading the questions for the audio version of this post as well.

With all that said, let's get cracking!

Question 1

If you consider the different ways you can engage with pens and stationery—as a user, a collector, a hobbyist, a creator, a maker, a vendor—which roles fit best and what percentage of 100% would you assign to each? Are you happy with the balance?

I'd say I fit mostly into user, collector, & hobbyist, with just a dash of creator. I reckon it would break down as this:

I'm mostly fine with where it's at. I would like the Creator part to be bigger, but I've had a lot going on this year so things have fallen by the wayside a bit. I would probably like the Collector part to get a bit smaller as well, but as long as the Hobbyist and User are the main focus then I'm happy with that.

Question 2

What is something you want to understand better or develop more informed opinions about?

How to review ink. I find pens reasonably straightforward to review, but for whatever reason I struggle to write more than a couple paragraphs when it comes to ink. I love inks, possibly more than pens, but inks have far more variability that you need to take into consideration. You can't just try it on one type of paper because it may perform and even look completely different on others. How much of the feeling you have when writing with it is down to the pen rather than the ink or even the paper. It's a tricky one, and it's certainly one I want to get better at understanding.

Question 3

In the pen community, what's something someone has said or done that stuck with you?

I can't think of something specific—I'm horrendously bad at remembering things like this—but something that has always struck me about the pen community is how kind & welcoming it is, especially towards new users. There's very little in the way of gatekeeping and questions are always welcomed, which is awesome to see.

Question 4

There are now 25 hours in a day, a bonus hour is available to use however you like as long as pens or stationery are involved—how do you spend your hour?

Considering how backlogged my pen cleaning is, I like to think I would use that hour to give them some attention. But in reality, I'd probably just use it to ink up more pens to add to the pile.

Question 5

In the pen community yearbook, what would your superlative be? (i.e. "Best ______", "Most _______" "Most likely to _______")

At the moment, it would probably be "Most Likely to Randomly Disappear for 9 Months" 😅 Jokes aside, perhaps it'd be "Most Likely to Have Tried This Random New Chinese Pen". I do enjoy keeping up with Chinese pens and seeing how that side of the industry is continuing to develop in interesting ways.

Question 6

How do you feel about your handwriting?

I kinda like where it's at when I'm writing normally. It still needs some work, but I'm happy with most of it. My capital T's & Q's probably need the most work & I've yet to find a way of writing them that I really like. I do need more practice at keeping all my letters at a consistent size, though. They tend to get away from me a bit. Cursive needs a fair bit of work since I don't practice it often, and my fast handwriting when taking notes is pretty rough. I've always felt that I inherited my faither's "doctor scrawl". He was a microbiologist rather than a GP, but he still has the stereotypical chicken scratch that even he struggles to read.

Question 7

What is something you are proud of doing, achieving, or overcoming?

I'm proud to have reached over 100 subscribers to this blog. It may be a small number compared many others in this space, but I'm blown away that there are this many people interested in what I have to say about pens. Thank you so much to everyone who reads my ramblings, whether you're subscribed or not. I truly appreciate it <3

Question 8

You're going on a writing retreat anywhere in the world—where would you go, what would you write, and what would you write with?

It would probably be my aunt's "hut". It's basically a small log cabin that's in a remote mountain forest somewhere in the middle of Norway with this gorgeous lake out in front of it. I've never felt more at peace than when I was sitting outside the hut in glorious sunshine, no noise from cars, planes, or other people. Just you and the beauty of nature. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any of my photos from that time. It's been a good 20 years since I've been there & I beleive they've modernised it a little (they now have solar electricity that can power more than just the lights and an actual walkable path from the parking area, although I think it's still a dry toilet), but I'd very much like to go back again sometime even if it's not exactly as I remember it.

I'd want to take my folks with me, as I think it would be really nice to write their life stories down in a place that's so serene. They've lived such interesting lives, even if they don't think so themselves. As such, I would want to bring eyedropper or vacuum pens for their extra ink capacity, possibly my PenBBS 535 Year of the Ox, Asvine V126, and an eyedroppered Platinum Preppy Wa. If my Opus 88 Bella wasn't broken it wouldn've been ideal for this. For inks, I'd want to go with something permanent, so inks like Platinum Classic Khaki Black, Rohrer & Klingner Salix, or Diamine Forever Ink Smoky Mauve. And for paper, Life Noble Note A5 grid notebooks are my current bae, so I'd probably bring a couple of them along.

Question 9

What's a current or favourite creative outlet?

At the moment, probably writing & photographing blog posts. Even when I'm feeling my worst, being able to have something creative I can focus on while in bed and that takes minimal mental or physical exertion is incredibly important to me. Unfortunately, most posts that I start end up not going anywhere. I get so far into one only for it to flounder around the half-way point and I struggle to bring it to some kind of conclusion. Sometimes it's just a case of me ending up without any particularly strong feelings about the item and the review starts feeling directionless and vapid. I don't enjoy reading reviews like that, so I don't want to put them out into the world either.

Finishing posts I've started is something that I very much want to get better at, so I'll likely give many of them a revisit with fresh eyes and see if I can turn them into a post that's worth the time of the people reading it.

The photography side takes much more out of me, but I get the strongest joy from it. At the start of my blogs I'd wanted to have a uniform way of photographing things that was more utilatarian, but I quickly realised that making the images more creative while still accurately portraying the pens makes the whole post more interesting. I love using focus stacking techniques, especially in close-up macro shots so that the areas I want to highlight are fully in focus, and I don't think I've used the same lighting setup 2 posts in a row. Hopefully that keeps things interesting, not only for the readers, but for me as well.

Question 10

What's something that causes you benign envy—the kind of admiration and desire that leads to inspiration or motivation?

As sort of a folow on from the last question, it's great photography. For example, there's a user who posts regularly to the #FountainPen hashtag on Mastodon called "konama" who posts such wonderfully atmospheric photos of foutain pens with their morning coffee. Seeing a great pen photo in a post makes me want to push my own photography to be more creative. I love seeing it!

Question 11

What's a comfort item, material, or color?

Diamine Kong Girls. Just looking at that ink—whether in the bottle or on the page—fills me with a strange contentedness & brings me joy. It's a collaboration with the Hong Kong-based stationers Kong Girls and is a beautiful purple with electric blue shimmer. I don't know why it does this for me. Purple isn't even a particularly favourite colour of mine—ink or otherwise. But for some reason it does, and I'm happy that's the case.

Question 12

What would be a dream collaboration, project, or partnership?

I've kinda already had it when I got to write a guest spot in the Pen Addict review of the Sailor Tuzu. Brad is one of my most favourite people in the hobby, so getting to help out a little thanks to my abnormal grip was dope.

I would absolutely love to make an ink with Diamine at some point. It's likely nothing more than a pipe dream, but it's good to have one of those, right? I'm not quite sure what that colour would be. My perfect waterproof orange-red would be a strong contender—perhaps more on that in a later post...—possibly with some shimmer thrown in there for good meassure. Or maybe a chromashader? We don't see many of them in the orange/brown range, so that could be cool. I doubt I'd get to do something that complex with a first ink, but it's fun to think about.

And that's the 12 Pen Person Questions! Thanks again to Lisa for these questions, & please feel free to post your own answers using the #12PenPersonQuestions hashtag. I also want to give a big thank you to those who have stuck with me thus far. I have another post queued up that I just need to photograph and record the V.O. for, so I promise you won't need to wait another 8 months for the next one!