fountain pen – Deborah Makarios

February 15, 2025February 15, 2025

In Praise of Old Technology: the Fountain Pen

I am far from suggesting that everyone should be an old-fashioned fruitcake like myself, but if there’s one Old Technology I think everyone should use, it’s the fountain pen.

A black and gold fountain pen, uncapped, rests on a page covered in black handwriting.

The basic ballpoint – be it clicky or Cristal – is ubiquitous. More than 100 billion of the latter had been sold by late 2006, most of which will now be in landfills around the globe. If you get a free goody bag from an event or business, you can pretty much guarantee that there will be at least one ballpoint in there. At some point – when the ink runs out, or dries out, or you begin to feel oppressed by the sheer number of these things cluttering up your desk or other surfaces – it goes to the dump.

Millions if not billions of these cheap disposable pens are churned out each year, and millions if not billions of them go to the landfill each year, packed in with the trashy polyester clothing and the masses of disposable nappies, all merrily leaching their toxic guck for decades if not centuries to come.

The fountain pen, by contrast, is refillable, repairable, and, if properly cared for, will last for decades of use.

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June 11, 2020June 11, 2020

Celebratory Tiny Fountain Pen

As the long-running readers of this blog will know, when I finished the first draft of my first novel five and a half years ago (to be honest, it feels more like a decade), I bought a celebratory fountain pen.

Possessing moderate quantities of that desirable intangible, self-control, I resisted the urge to repeat the procedure every time I finished a draft. But self-control is none the worse for having the occasional treat, so once I was within hailing distance of getting The Wound of Words off my hands (not just the first draft but the whole thing, published and all), I ordered another celebratory pen. (Just a tiny one…)

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May 28, 2020May 28, 2020

7 Things My Desk Says

About me, that is. What it would probably say if given free rein is “help, I’m being buried alive!” Except, of course, for the trifling point that it is not alive, being neither made of sapient pearwood, nor belonging to someone who has refused hospitality to a French enchantress lately.

But what my desk says about me is Quite A Lot, and not all of it flattering. So here is the dirt the desk would dish: seven things one can deduce about me from my desk – or at least the top of it, because even I cannot give you a clear account of what exactly I have in the cupboard and drawers thereof (which tells you something about me all by itself).

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