Like many of you, perhaps, I've always been interested in not only the instruments of writing, but in those who use those instruments as tools of their trade -- professional writers. This page is devoted to a number of my customers who are novelists and non-fiction writers, and who share the love of fountain pens that most likely drew you to this website in the first place.

I've found that many readers have a fascination with the tools and habits of those who actually earn their living through the creative process of imagination and writing (most of us harbor the conceit that we too could pen that next great science fiction or mystery book, or that the Great American novel lies buried deep within, if only we had the time to sit down and write it).

Well, here are some very talented people who are actually doing it, and I've asked them to share some of their thoughts and feelings about the allure of writing instruments in general, fountain pens in particular, and perhaps a secret or two about their own creative process as writers.

Katie Lyn Branson

'Kate's Bookshelf' blog can be found here  
 

Fountains pens have been calling to me for quite some time, mostly from the fact that they are 'vintage' in my mind.  It is what you expect a serious writer to use.  I've only been using fountain pens for the past year, but since then I do have to say that my writing has taken a turn by having the fountain pens. I find I can write much faster as I don't have to press down on the page like I would with a ball point.  I am not a person who can easily move their hands across a page without getting a cramp, so the fountain pens make it that much easier.

I'm just still a writer, not author.  At some point I hope to have my children's picture books published, but they haven't even been picked up by an agent yet.  I do dabble in blogging when I have the chance, and my own fiction that is mostly fun romance, but the goal is to be in children's books. I never leave the house without my notebook and one of my pens.  I need to have paper and pens with me at all times now, and having a fountain pen makes it that much more exciting to write. I look for every opportunity to scribble something out, even if it never becomes something.

And just like some people have pen addictions, something I think I could easily and possibly have started, books and writing are my passion.

Jack Labusch

Why Fountain Pens?

Jack Labusch, who describes himself as a “reviving penman”, is a semi-retired technical writer and advertising salesman. Recently he finished a book-length commentary in manuscript on health care, and he’s written a “whole lot”, as he describes it, of unpublished ephemera for his own amusement and uplift.

Picture a 300-word letter to the editor, or a 650-word newspaper essay. If you have mastery of your subject matter and a strong understanding of your intended audience, you may indeed compose rapidly at your computer’s keyboard. But mastery is sometimes deceptive, a self-delusion. The polished phrases you’ve used routinely may be a sign you’re saying the same old things to the same old people. You’re not thinking anymore. You’re stroking. There’s nothing wrong with rhetorical comfort food. But, do you really want to eat macaroni and cheese all the time?

That means settling into the hard work of writing. That means thinking, that means research, that means making a lot of judgments about subject matter, audience, choice of language, aggressiveness or restraint in argument, and so on. Can I say what I want to say and be believed? If not, is there an alternate way of saying the same thing? When I was writing about health care, I studied organized labor’s historical closed shop for about a year, only to discover the phrase “closed shop” didn’t mean anything to people. You bet, “grind” is the right word to describe writing at its most difficult.

To start, I’ll have a legal pad, an 8 1/2” X 14” in canary yellow that I buy a dozen at a time. I’ll have it slipped into a padfolio or secured to a clipboard. Yes, I experiment with other papers, pads, and what-not. I’ve developed a real liking for Rhodia and Alvin pocket notebooks, and the claims made about the quality of the paper seem justified to me.

I’ll have a fist full of writing tools, too. Drafting pencils, the darker 4B grade, I’ve used for decades, and I’ll order those a dozen at a time. I’ve sometimes used colored pencils to accent ideas, or for mind-mapping, which is just brainstorming on paper. Sometimes I’ll have a straightedge, or drafting triangles, or templates, if I want to make my doodling a little more upmarket. Yes, I’ll have erasers, too, the stick type and oblongs.

Some time ago I’d begun a re-acquaintanceship with a fountain pen I’d bought twenty years earlier on the “Montblanc principle”: it looked good and helped me burn through money. The pen is a sterling silver gem put out by a major manufacturer, and tipped with a wonderfully smooth 14K gold nib. I hadn’t used it often, and in recent years cartridges seemed increasingly difficult to find. We live in a world of reliable stick pens at less than 25¢ each. Why bother with a fountain pen that appears to be obsolete?

Well, I liked writing with the darned thing. When it developed looseness in the snap fit (since repaired with a Q-Tip and toothpick), I looked for a replacement. I describe the search for a fountain pen in a blog entry I was invited to post on Pocket Blonde, run by Diane Fennel. I didn’t even know what I was looking for until I stumbled onto the Web community of fountain pen enthusiasts, such as Fountain Pen Network, Pocket Blonde, and maybe two dozen more. Whatever pen savvy I have, I borrowed from the generous opinions of others.

Why fountain pens? is the question. I told Norman I’d suggest a fountain pen to any student or writer for the purpose of changing up, or breaking out of a bad groove. I’d been an amateur drummer, and sometimes you can climb out of a musical rut by changing your tools, such as working the toms, or laying on the wire brushes. Is price a concern? Yes, sure. I’m pretty confident the “Montblanc principle” includes the idea that “this pen is so expensive you wouldn’t actually write with it, or buy a second one, or carry it in your pocket”. Norman’s high-end Chinese pens are writers, they’re very well made, and they’re priced so you don’t feel like a darned fool when you order one.

Proof of the pudding. This morning I sent a postcard to a woman I’ve known for years who’s traveling in Washington State. I used my Jinhao, described by Norman as having a Western-sized medium nib. What Linda will see is an ink (Private Reserve’s Velvet Black) that’s remarkably darker than what she’s used to, and something unexplainable about the handwriting---the nibbed pen’s variation in line width, sometimes called shading. She’ll guess I want to make an impression on her. That’s the whole point, isn’t it?

Helen Chapman

   Neutral Zone
 

I’m old enough to have learned cursive with a fountain pen, and never got over it. Oh, ball points and gel pens are okay. But nothing comes close to the look and feel of a good, real pen. A good pen is my best friend in court, taking notes for the boss, and handling exhibits between attorneys and the court.

My stories always start in longhand, usually while sitting in the courtroom awaiting the judge’s verdict. Yes, I do the majority of writing on the computer, but I fear I can’t edit there. I still have to print out the manuscript, then go at it with a pen.

The Wing Sung burgundy is my newest pen, my first from His Nibs, but it definitely won’t be my last. Now I just have to worry about the boss, or a client making off with it.

Many of the stories I write are about serial killers, and criminals in general. Please rest assured that horrible, mutilating scenes are just my own way of getting things out of my system, so I don’t do it for real. I also have never knowingly associated with any real criminals, other than the few my boss represents.

And as my disclaimer in all my stories says, all identities have been changed to protect the innocent, and the stupid. Don’t sue me. I don’t have much anyway.

A K M Adam

A K M Adam is a biblical scholar, theologian, author, priest, technologist and blogger. He is Visiting Professor of New Testament at Duke Divinity School. He is a writer, speaker, and activist who simultaneously engages the worlds of theology and technology on topics including postmodern philosophy, hermeneutics, education and 
collaborative discovery of truth and meaning.

Although I've been involved with digital technology since the late seventies, I have long relished the sensual satisfaction of writing and drawing with rich, wet ink on paper whose texture you can feel through a pen's nib. When I write an essay, a book or a sermon, I very frequently need to set my trusty Apple laptop aside and start drafting outlines, notes, and arguments on legal pads (or note cards or my pocket Moleskin). The kinetic engagement of more of my muscles, of my mind's capacity to shape letters more or less well, inspires more variable, more colorful, and usually more fluent and convincing prose to fill my legal pages. Typing at my computer -- much as I love it -- lacks the multidimensional aesthetic stimulation that handwriting with my pens provides, and I write better when more of my faculties contribute to the writing.

Fountain pens call to mind my father's gradebooks, which he inscribed for years with a distinctive hand. I remember most vividly the Sheaffer 304 student pens he used; as I moved into the vocation of teaching, I began using Sheaffers which one could then easily find hanging on store shelves. They call to mind my mother's study of lettering, which I emulated with dip pens and eventually with italic-nib No Nonsense pens. They call to mind my grandfather's Dubonnet Red Esterbrook pen, which my mother handed down to me. And they remind me of my own peculiar path from a Kohinoor Rapidograph (bought in Pampelona, if I recall correctly) with which I took notes in my summer French immersion program, and thereafter in high school (to the bemusement of friends and teachers) on to paternal Sheaffers and maternal Osmiroids, and eventually to older heirloom and collectable pens.

When I put iridium to paper and set down a fluid line of words, I share a writing technology with millennia of scribes, with literary giants, musical geniuses, with the saints whose faith I teach and practice -- and it is beauty and grace and joy.

The author's most recent book is Faithful Interpretation.

Karen Traviss

     City of Pearl

Karen Traviss is a New York Times bestselling novelist who's been collecting pens since childhood. She lives in Wiltshire, England, and has a weakness for Sheaffer Tuckaways, superflex nibs, and Yard-O-Led pencils.

Karen Traviss' website and her Novels page

Mike Toot

Mike Toot has written or edited fourteen books about computer software, performed Shakespeare, argued cases in front of state Supreme Court judges, and competed in offshore sailing events. He currently resides in Seattle with his wife and Maine Coon cat in a fully-renovated 1908 Craftsman house. He loves to do absolutely nothing on weekends.

There's something about computer technology that just doesn't lend itself to love. I write about computers and software for a living, and I never come home and croon a sonnet to my keyboard or wax poetic about a 
mouse. They're tools, ones that get the job done. So after years of working with computers, I'm stepping backwards into the future and returning to pen and ink.

That doesn't mean I've turned Luddite and tossed away all the hardware; there is no way I could do the work I currently do without a computer. But for everyday use, I don't want to be tethered to an electronic nag. Nothing I do is so important that I have to be in constant communication with anyone. I suppose if I was a world-famous transplant surgeon, waiting for a liver to be MedEvac'd into an operating theater, then sure; give me the gadget. But to read text messages while I'm waiting for the waiter to deliver dinner? Fuggedaboutit.

As part of my regressive behavior I'm now using a Hipster PDA and David Allen's Getting Things Done methodology. My new fountain pen (a Haolilai ZHF101 from Norman) is the perfect complement to the HPDA. You can hear eyeballs click as I pull out a leather jotter loaded with index cards and my fountain pen, suavely write down a note or two, and return pen and notes to my pocket. No fumbling for a stylus, no thumb-surfing through menus, no squinting at cartoon-like icons.

Instead there is the silky flow of ink and a sensual appreciation of the pen itself. It's a reminder of genteel times, ones with leather-bound books, gas lamps, roaring fires, literary salons, witty banter over brandy. All in the space of a few seconds: a touch of elegance, a soupçon of pleasure.

Meanwhile my business acquaintances are hunched over, thumbing at keys the size of rice grains or stabbing at the PDA as if it was an electronic voodoo doll. For them, it integrates all their communications
and contact information into a single bleeping shell, and it works -- for them. I'm quite happy to be back in touch with the sensual pleasures of pen, ink, and paper, and to bring a little bit of class into my ever-accelerating world.
 

Maya North

Continued here                                            click here if you'd like to email Maya

S. L. Viehl

Stardoc: A Novel

I have been in love with fountain pens since my grandmother gave me my first Parker back in high school (about the same time the wheel was invented.) The flow of the ink and the feel of the nib against paper made me feel like my hand was dancing as I wrote.  All the writers I admired had written their stories with quills they dipped in ink, so I felt an immediate connection to the past as well.  Only I didn't have to go catch a goose and pluck it first if I wanted to write a story.

One of my first novels, The Diary of Sebatina Hariski, was not only written by  fountain pen but illustrated as well with different colored inks.  Fountain pens are great for quick sketches, and at the time I wanted it to look as much like a real diary as possible.  The English teacher who gave me an A+ for it then threw it away (argh!) thought I'd done a great job.  (Moral of that story:  Never give anyone the only copy of something you're written.)

Fountain pens became more of a necessity ten years later, when I lost the use of my left hand after two surgeries to remove some benign tumors (I was a southpaw until 1985.)  To practice with my right hand, I used my trusty Parker FP to hand write the novel I was working on, and taught myself to write again.  I think I would have given up if it hadn't been for the smooth flow of the ink, which made my new handwriting look much better than it actually was. 

Nearly all of my novels -- fifty-three of them to date -- were started with fountain pens on paper, too.  I've also kept a daily journal for the last thirty years, so I've probably used up a couple of industrial-sized vats of blue and black ink by now.  I was never happier than in 1998, when I used my grandmother's fountain pen to sign my first publishing contract for my SF series, StarDoc.

My collection is hovering near the two hundred mark now, but I often give pens to friends so I'm always making room in the collection for new acquisitions (most recently, a gorgeous Hero Doctor FP from HisNibs; thank you, Norman.)  Fountain pens are not only great writing tools, but beautiful pieces of art.  They inspire the mind and delight the eye, and they make your hand writing look terrific, even when you write like a near-sighted physician.  If you've never used a fountain pen, give one a test drive and see what you think -- but be prepared to become an immediate, life long addict.
 

S. L. Viehl's website

Chandler McGrew

Cold Heart

Like most authors today (excluding Grisham who may be some kind of mutant from a writer's planet) I write using a PC. When you're what editors call an 'organic writer' like myself, however, and too lazy to do outlines, you have to slog through numerous drafts. I accomplish that with paper and pen, and a fountain pen is my preferred weapon.

I was not an overnight success, having written 12 novels, signed with 4 different agents, and received over 300 rejection letters over 8 years before garnering my first two book deal. During that period I used up a lot
of disposable fountain pens. But after receiving my first advance I was doing rewrites one day when an epiphany struck. I leapt from my chair, drove thirty miles and purchased my first Waterman. When I got home my wife wanted to know where the heck I'd just run off to, and I informed her that it was ridiculous to be doing edits on a manuscript that was paying off our mortgage using a two dollar pen. Luckily, she heartily agreed and a collection was born.

Unlike ballpoints, fountain pens are as individualistic as their owners. I have pens as ancient as something just over one hundred years (an eyedrop fill Waterman) to modern marvels from HisNibs.com like my new Monteverde (which is swiftly becoming my favorite) and each of them has it's own feel and writing characteristics. They are a joy to use and a joy to own for all their temperament. Fountain pen ownership is almost like pet ownership. Mistreat a ballpoint and throw it away. Mistreat a fountain pen and it will bite.

Chandler McGrew's website

Bill Rogers

I'm a would-be writer.  My biography is easy to tell, since I haven't done much that would be of any interest except to myself.  I'm a State environmental enforcement guy working in a rural area, checking out what industry we have.

In my spare time I edit my minum opus, Flanker's Tale.  It's a five volume SF-fantasy epic; it meets the dictionary definition of epic, so I guess I can call it one.  The five novels are The Gifts of the Dragons, The Hall of Honor, Starhunter, The Places In Between and Shatterer of Worlds. 

It's a good story poorly written, but with the advice of a few professional writers who have looked at parts of it, I'm knocking it into shape.  I'm sure anyone who writes will understand me when I say I wish I'd known how to write before I wrote.
 

Continued here

Ordering Procedures & Returns

International customers, please note, we will not falsify shipping documents

Please send your order and shipping address (along with any questions) to:

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Warranties and returns

If an item proves to be defective, in most cases the manufacturer's warranty will apply. However, please email us first so that we can determine the easiest way to resolve the problem to your satisfaction. In the case of fountain pens -- which are a bit more individualistic than other writing instruments -- what may at first appear to be a defect (hard starting or poor flow for example), can in almost all cases be resolved with a few simple 'tweaks' to the nib, which we'll be happy to guide you through or perhaps suggest returning to us for adjustment.

Should you wish to return a non-defective item within 3 days of receipt because it doesn't suit you for some reason, again please email us and we'll arrange an exchange, credit or refund (minus any shipping/insurance charges), if the item is returned in an 'as new' condition. If you've dipped a fountain pen to try its writing characteristics, kindly clean off any ink residue prior to shipping -- to save us both a nasty surprise .

We want you to be happy with your purchase from HisNibs.com and hope to have you join the ranks of our many long-term, repeat customers!

Revised: June 19th, 2013

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