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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.

 

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.

 

 

 

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.

Pens - real pens, that is, with proper nibs and honest, messy ink - are the antidote to a high-tech writers' life. I'll be the first to admit that the PC and word processing software make life much easier for writers: whoever developed the cut-and-paste function deserves a Nobel prize for their contribution to writers' sanity. And have you ever had to check through 600 pages of typed copy to find and replace every use of a certain word? When you're knocking out 150,000 words, electronics wins every time. 

I have writer friends who swear by doing drafts in longhand because it stops them hammering out a stream of consciousness. They feel the keyboard is just to fast to allow the self-editing process that's inherent in manual writing to take place. I'm not sure I could work that way: I'd never keep up with my schedule, for a start, and  I need to see words on a screen in an impersonal typeface. That helps me dissociate from the intensely personal act of writing and see the work as a book, as the reader will see it. But the more I use computers, the more comfort (in every sense of the word) I find in pens, especially vintage ones.

I do all my outlining, planning and revision on paper. After a brief flirtation with three-by-five cards, fiction planning software and scraping pointed sticks in the dirt, I now use Clairefontaine plain A5 notebooks and a real pen. Now, that might sound as if I have just the one instrument. I lied. I'm too embarrassed to reveal just how many fountain pens I have, but I can honestly say the collection hasn't topped three figures - yet. Right now, I'm using a 90 year old Waterman eyedropper, a Doric with an adjustable nib, a tiny 1920s gold-filled Eversharp ladies' pen, a Mottishawed Namiki VP, and one of His Nibs' extra-fine nibbed Hero pens for line-editing and marking proofs. No, you're right - nobody needs to carry five fountain pens around with them, but this isn't about need. It's about ritual.

Applying a beautiful ink to fine paper with a flexible nib changes you and the way you think. It slows you down. It eases those neck twinges you get from hours at a keyboard. It makes you think of the form of words and ideas, how they look as well as how they sound. And when you handle a very old pen, you can't avoid wondering what it wrote before it came into your possession.

Let's face it - lugging a laptop into your favourite coffee shop just isn't the same as sitting down to a steaming latte and taking out pen and paper to indulge in some thinking time. Fountain pens are civilized. In fifty, maybe a hundred years' time, someone else will be making use of my pens and finding as much pleasure in them as I did: but the software will be long gone.

 

Karen Traviss' website and her Novels page

 

Maya North

 

I got hooked on fountain pens when my daughter gave me the incredible gift of a granddaughter, the magnificent Sophia (picture above).  I decided that there was nothing for it but to write journals for her--one for her as a little girl, another one (maybe two) for when she was old enough to hear family history as I remember it.  That's what is lost to us--who our people were.  Our grandparents are so often nothing more than ciphers to us and as for great-grands and more--ephemeral bits of smoke and drift.  And of course, since I am writing them in these magnificent Italian leather-bound journals, nothing would do but to write them using fountain pens.  So far, my favorite is an inexpensive Sheaffer recommended by His Nibs himself--writes as smooth as butter and I have that great copper color in it right now. 
 
I've been writing for years, mostly on computers because I can type as fast as I think.  The first completed opus was a sci-fantasy work begun at age 20 which will probably never see the light of day.  Currently I'm working on two things at once (it's that attention-span thing).  One is a supermarket romance I intend to publish under a pseudonym.  I have it being reviewed by two friends who are not great fans of romances and they have told me that if I leave them hanging they will hunt me down and make me finish it.  This is a good sign.  The other I have just begun is a memoir about my brother who died of AIDS at age 35--some of his life, some of mine.  Not sure where it's going, but I'm pretty sure it's going under a pseudonym also with lots of details changed as my father is still living and we've finally achieved peace. 
 
Here is an preliminary, unedited excerpt from that, with some of the details changed because, well, you know...

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

 

 

S. L. Viehl

 

cover 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

cover 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

 

 

 

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

orders@hisnibs.com
(on PayPal transactions, the email address may also display as stonebri@sprynet.com -- both are valid)

We will email you back with your order total (PA residents please add 6% sales tax)

 

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 His Nibs.com and hope to have you join the ranks of our many long-term, repeat customers!

 

Revised: July 21st, 2008

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