I’ve used fountain pens most of my life, ever since I used to shoplift the cheap Sheaffers in my school’s bookshop in middle school. I write several pages a day with fountain pens most days, using cheap black-and-white marbled composition books. When I fill a book, I skim through, underline the few bits I want to keep, type the bits into a Word file, then rip apart and toss the composition book. I don’t really care about stationery, just pens.

And I don’t care about all the things I read about in collector forums – not bullet journaling, not fancy paper, not stickers or washi tape, not sparkly ink or antique ink stands. I just like writing. Although I have a lot of fountain pens, even though some of them are expensive, even though a few of them are vintage, I am not a collector. I’m a user.

A fountain pen has a nib with a hairline channel that splits it in half. Wedded to the nib is a feed that gets saturated with ink, coming from a reservoir or a cartridge in the body of the pen. If the pen is good and the ink is well made, the line that flows from the polished tip onto the paper glistens slightly and is mesmerizingly fluid, though it dries quickly. It’s so much nicer than the sludgy track of the ballpoint, and better than a rollerball because though the line is similar, their prosaic little tips just don’t seem to have the panache and artistic appeal of a proper fountain pen nib.

I own a large number of fountain pens, some of them quite expensive, and maybe ten of them restored vintage ones from the thirties or forties. I have had many more pens, but I broke some of them and I disliked others; I have given away a lot of pens I don’t like that much, including expensive ones. I keep buying them, though.

I make most of my purchases at the annual pen show in Philadelphia, or online. If I’m in a city that has a pen shop, though, I’ll go by and admire at what they have to offer. I have bought pens in stores in Florence, Italy, in Berlin, Germany, and in Cincinnati. I’ve bought quite a few in New York City, where unlike most cities there are several places you can get them. There was a Lamy flagship store for a while in Manhattan, and you can get pens at Goods for the Home and Kinokuniya. I hear there’s a good store in Brooklyn, too. Pen shops tend to be dinky and idiosyncratic, or else they are stationery stores with a case of pens or two.

When I’m in Manhattan, I usually go to Fountain Pen Hospital. I usually deal with Jimmy, who has worked there for thirty years. It’s a small shop with a warren of glass cases and cabinets, and it carries most of the decent modern pens and a handful of vintage ones.

Last week when I was in New York, as usual, I walked in and was amiably ignored. Jimmy was dealing with an important-looking man when I came in, and then he started attending to a couple who came in after I did. That’s normal.

Eventually Jimmy got around to me, and sold me a pretty Esterbrook Botanical Gardens push-button fill  pen and some ink. He gave me good service, swapping out the medium nib that was on the pen for a fine nib, and dipping it in black ink so I could test it.

He did not comment on the fact that I was spending too much (or else not enough) on a small writing instrument. It is just a transaction to him. You can spend thousands on pens, or you can spend ten dollars.

After I left the shop, I sat on a bench in City Hall Park and filled the pen. The new ink is a deep chocolate brown, almost black. I wrote a few lines with it, and then put it into my new pen case. It isn’t the first time I’ve filled a new pen in City Hall Park, and it probably won’t be the last, as long as the store is still there.

The funny thing is that when I sit down to actually write something that someone else might read, I’m more likely, as now, to type it. I am a very fast touch typist, I love the sensation of my fingers fluttering over the keys, and I’m endlessly absorbed by the process of editing. I used to take shorthand, too, and I’ve worked as a calligrapher.

It’s all about the interfaces between my brain, the physical instrument, and the words, and it might as well be beautiful.