Hey there!
Along with Hallowe’en, PSL, and competitive high school band season, it’s planner obsession season. If you’re considering a Hobonichi and a capless fountain pen, this installment has got you covered.1
Here’s what this post2 looks like on the other side of the page. Looking at it closely like this, the ghosting seems bad. But in practice — especially when the pages themselves are nearly onionskin-thin and so durable? I find it very acceptable. This is truly the worst it gets, and I’ve written on Hobonichi paper with just about everything.
The paper/the planner/the fandom: The Hobonichi universe can be overwhelming3 and expensive.4 For me, it basically comes down to this: I really like having one very unstructured page per day, and Hobonichi gets that done without bulk. The Techo and the Dayfree fit into any bag I’ve ever carried, and the Cousin is about the size of a trade paperback.
The pens: I’ve covered the Pilot Decimo above (and its big sister, the Vanishing Point) here before. But Renee was kind enough to give me this little blue plastic capless fountain pen at Writer Camp this summer, and I have to say: it’s delightful! It’s very light, not rattly, and the ink flows really smoothly through what’s basically an EF nib. Also, the clip isn’t in a place where you have to incorporate it into how you hold the pen — something that should be a huge consideration for the Pilots.5 Renee wasn’t sure about this pen’s manufacturing origins. I think she made it with magic.
The inks: C gave me five bottles a few years ago for my birthday, and these are two of them. They’re lovely6 and very easy on my pens. But every time I use them, I have to use the Google Translate camera on the boxes and then consult various fountain pen forums to remember what their deal is. The short version: they’re from a line of inks commemorating the four seasons, that Sailor folded into another line of their inks about five years ago.7 Anyway, this time I wrote everything down and put Post-it notes in the boxes.
If you’re just here for the fountain pen and paper stuff, you’re done. Until next time, which will hopefully be sooner!
E
P.S. If you’re a Goulet Pens customer and aren’t aware of the latest already, you should probably check out at least the top of this /r/fountainpens thread.8
Have you noticed that more writers seem to be doing studio art type stuff lately? Or is it just me noticing this, because I’m one of them? I really threw myself into it about six months ago, and it’s been therapeutic.9
Lately I’ve been:
Watching lots of YouTubes, mostly hosted by women of my demographic who do similar studio art type stuff.10
Trying things out11, and having a really good time.
Upcycling scraps into bookmarks and thinking about making notebooks for writers — a certain kind I’m fairly sure doesn’t exist in the handcrafted universe.
Looking at online sales venues, trying out some sidegig Instagram handles…
Yes, it’s probably taken time I should have spent working on the novel. But I can’t get away from the idea that it’s been in service to that, too. At Writer Camp in August, I had two of the most productive days I’ve had in years. I’m certain that only happened because I stopped on the way there and bought a sketch pad and cheap markers to go with my laptop and Scrivener files. Both days, all of it was open in front of me and I never once thought what I was doing was a waste of time.
That said: I promise the next entry won’t be titled Crayola, Crayola, Crayola.
E
I swear that it used to be easy to change the image size in a Substack post. I wanted what follows to be side-by-side. Please imagine it that way.
The little plastic tabs on the side were an experiment this year. I’m not sure I’m going to put them on my 2025 Hobonichi. They subtly compelled me to flip past the front monthly/weekly parts of the planner, which in previous years I’ve used for notes and doodles and lists and stuff like that. As a result, this year I noticed that what follows the “MISC” tab is…not much real estate.
It’s also full of potential for deep irritation on a bad day. There are interesting Hobonichi resources out there, but I don’t follow the forums. There are too many people who discover there’s an insane amount of stuff one can buy at midnight on a day in September, then post their hauls in October, then berate people who eBay in November because everything has sold out, then excitedly put their stuff together in December, and by the end of February are then complaining that they don’t know what to do with their Hobonichi, they wish they hadn’t gotten into it so hard, next year they’re going back to whatever they did before. (By comparison, Midori communities seem to spend most of their time learning how to make their own journal covers.)
I buy the books. One year, C & S got me an official Techo cover for Christmas. Everything else I have for them, like the cover on my Cousin, is off-brand.
I can’t stress this enough: try a capless Pilot before you buy a capless Pilot. And be aware that the Decimo and VP feel different from each other, too.
The Yama-dori is better than Pilot Iroshizuku’s beloved Ku-jaku. Fight me.
I love Sailor inks, but keeping track of their lore is on about the same energy level as Magic: The Gathering.
YMMV, but this was enough for me to unsubscribe from Goulet’s various groups and newsletters, and to put them on my X/Chik-fil-a/some local businesses list. I wrote an entire draft about Goulet Pens last week because this whole thing gets very personal for me on several fronts. But I ended up scrapping it because it was getting too close to a traditional essay and that’s rarely a good place for me to go.
<Insert entire entry about burnout, anecdotes circa 2019 - 2022 I only tell in person, and job hunting with some especially crappy challenges.>
Noting what I like and what I don’t like, and often saying to the screen: “Please stop apologizing for everything.”
I just finished my first art journal and I didn’t realize until the end that it’s alllllll over the place, content-wise.