Ah the paper fetish, oh how strong a curse it is. Those of us who are afflicted know the feeling well; we walk past the office supply aisles of a store and hear the paper calling us. Sure, we have probably walked down that aisle 500 times in the past and know there’s nothing worth buying yet we check again, just in case.

Yesterday I stood in the aisle at my local Target holding a Miquelrius notebook in my hand and staring at the Rhodias sitting a couple shelves lower. I had to work to convince myself not to buy either. The Miquelrius was color coded for subjects and the pages seemed thin so that wasn’t all that hard to put back. The Rhodia, on the other hand, screamed at me to buy it. If they had a better selection, I would have picked something but they only had 2 types: the stapled pad which I dislike, and the reverse notebook which I would have bought if they had anything other than graph lining. I made it out of the store without any paper, quite a feat if I must say so myself.

For me, it’s a constant battle not to buy paper. I don’t know what it is, but every time I’m in physical contact with paper I love or have heard is good, I want to buy it. I literally have to argue with my inner voice to save myself from spending the money. Then I head home, open up the 2 drawers in my desk that are stuffed with empty notebooks and journals, and remind myself that I have enough paper to last me for years.

Ah what a rough life. I can’t wait for the pen buying fetish to start back up, I can feel it in the back of my mind just begging to be let free.

Exaclair has great timing. Right about the time I was lamenting my lack of organization, I stumbled onto the Quo Vadis blog and saw they were offering planners to bloggers who wanted to review them. I had no experience with any of their products but I’m not one to turn down an opportunity so I threw my hat in the ring. I chose the Equology Textagenda Daily planner which is marketed as a student planner but I hoped the daily layout would suit my needs. Karen quickly shipped the red covered planner I requested and I put it to use immediately. Over the last two and a half weeks, I’ve used it almost every day to keep my work and personal activities on track.

First, let’s go over the basics of the Equology Textagenda. The Equology line is Quo Vadis’ recycled paper products and while that makes most people cringe, you’ll see you have nothing to fear. The cover has a nice textured rubbery feel and is refillable. Being that it’s aimed at students, this planner covers the dates between August and July to accommodate a normal school year. I personally don’t see that as a problem but some people will have a hard time getting out of the Jan-Dec rut. Quo Vadis does sell a planner called the “Notor” which contains what appears to be the same page layout but in a more conventional Jan-Dec date range. However, it should be pointed out that the Notor is not an Equology product thus does not contain recycled paper.

If I had to guess, I bet you’re still thinking about the recycled paper. Admit it, the idea of writing on 100% post-consumer fiber conjures up images of writing on a paper towel or a brown paper sack. Well have no fear, Quo Vadis has actually created a recycled paper you don’t need to be afraid of. It’s not going to win a brightness contest against Clairefontaine or Black n’ Red but for a recycled paper, they did a great job of making it white. Even more shocking is the fact that it’s very fountain pen friendly. Even my Pelikan M200 with Mont Blanc British Racing Green ink which is notorious for how badly it feathers doesn’t have any problems on the Textagenda’s recycled paper. There was a fair amount of bleed through but I find that a normal occurrence with this pen and ink combination. None of my “normal” flowing fountain pens exhibited any annoying characteristics. As with most paper, there is a slight amount of show-through but nothing I consider to be out of the ordinary. I have used as many different types of pens as I could in the past 2 weeks and all of them were very well behaved on this paper.

Something I really found very handy is the way this planner helps you find the current date. Instead of an old fashioned ribbon, the bottom right hand corner of each page is perforated allowing you to tear off the corner once you’re done with that page. This makes finding the current day a snap which is great if you’re opening your planner before you’ve had your morning coffee. One word of advice, you may be tempted to tear off several pages at a time but that’s not the best idea as I ripped a few pages trying to get caught up to the current date. I find the best way to tear them off is usually 2-3 at a time and folding them at the perforation helps as well.

The Textagenda is one of Quo Vadis’ line of medium sized planners and I think it’s the perfect size for daily use.  It measures 4.75″x6.75″ and I’ve been carrying it in a small messenger style laptop bag that I use to transport my 9″ netbook. If it fits in that bag, it will just about fit in any bag. The cover is thin and flexible but very tough so it should easily handle being shoved in and out of your bag on a daily basis and will most likely live through many refills.

They actually crammed a lot of features into this planner, so many that I’m not going to have time to devote to each one. Sufficed to say, they’re pretty self explanatory and if there’s anything I don’t cover to your satisfaction, just ask for a clarification in the comments.

When you open the planner, you’re first greeted with the typical personal information page, followed by a quick glance calendar, a class schedule, and a very handy page that is labeled “Anno-Planning” which is intended to give you a quick daily glance at your entire year. There’s a very tiny box designated for each page so I’m not 100% sure what you could write in there, but I suppose if you had small handwriting and a very fine pen, you might be OK. At the back of the planner there’s several maps, an address book, and another quick glance calendar for the upcoming years, in this case, 2010/2011. I want to circle back to the address book very quickly. In today’s day and age, almost everyone has their address book on their phone or has a dedicated book for this information. I’m not sure if I’d want to spend time putting a bunch of address data into a planner that will only last a year but if you want it, Quo Vadis has provided it. I’m sure someone will find it very handy and if you don’t, it’s easily ignored.

Quo Vadis makes it clear on the opening page that they intend for this to replace the somewhat normal system of random dates and notes in a notebook. Once you see the open page layout, it’s pretty obvious how this planner could easily fix your poor organizational skills by giving you a great place to cover what needs to be accomplished on any given day. Sure, you’ll still need a real notebook for notes, but if you need to jot down something about your schedule or just a quick note, there’s plenty of room for it.  At the top of each page is a very prominently displayed date surrounded by lines for each hour between 8am to 7pm. These are clearly intended for printing your class schedule although you shouldn’t feel locked into that. I’ve been using this section to jot down meeting schedules for those rare days where I might have to tear myself away from my desk.

The rest of the page consists of a box for the day’s priority items, 14 blank lines, and another box for notes.  I’ve been using the 14 blank lines as my way of keeping track of what I need to do throughout the day, and also as a record of what I’ve accomplished. Seeing how the lines are blank, you’re free to work out your own way of using them. I use a system of prefacing each line with a P: or W: which obviously stand for Personal and Work. I mostly use the planner for work as I need to remember what I did the day before in the morning’s stand-up meeting.

Until the Textagenda arrived at my door, I had been using a single notebook for all my meeting notes, work notes, schedules, etc… Once I had this daily planner in my hand, it became obvious how cluttered my previous system had been. Sure, it wasn’t a bad setup but when I can easily flip back to last Tuesday and see what I worked on, it makes a big difference over the scrambled notes I had before. All in all, I find the Textagenda to be a very well executed daily planner and it does a great job bridging the gap between a serious planner and a notebook for your daily tasks. Whether you’re a student or not, it’s a handy tool. It’s also good for us pen geeks to know we don’t have to be afraid of using our favorite pen on this planner, even if it is made out of recycled material.

I’m pretty sure everyone who reads this blog uses their stash of notebooks and pens for different reasons. What do you use yours for?

School notes?

Journaling?

Scribbling notes about your day?

Notes for an upcoming story or perhaps you even handwrite your stories in them?

Maybe something else? Hit the comments and tell us what you like to write about most!

Ah the beloved and classic Moleskine, how I wanted to know thee. Before I bought my first one, I read numerous accounts of people feeling very strongly one way or another about their place in paperdom. The complaints ranged from the paper being the most horrible ever made, to the best ever made and everything in between. I tend to research my paper purchases heavily but when you see something as visual pleasing as the Moleskine and the seemingly 50/50 split on the quality, I simply have to try it myself.

Unfortunately for Moleskine, I didn’t get very far in my usage. Yes, I still carry the Volant in my pocket because it’s the perfect size and intended to be used with a Fisher space pen which has no problems on any paper. However,  the Cahier and the ever ubiquitous 3.5″x5.5″ hardback Moleskine are getting shelved to most likely never be used again. I really wanted them to work because they’re everything I imagine a notebook should be. Simple, classy, and very easily obtained. Even when placing a Moleskine next to a knockoff Piccadilly, I would pick the Moleskine, there’s just something about it that oozes class. Yes, I’m aware the Piccadilly looks almost the same so my choice is hard to explain, it might be the page color or the way the one I own seems to have a slightly more hand assembled look but the Moleskine simply calls to me more than the cheaper version.

Of course, that’s where the fun stops. Both brands of notebook have some issues  with certain fountain pens but the Moleskine has a problem with almost every fountain pen I’ve tried on it. I’ve read that using a Fine or XF nib is the key but I don’t like those, I’m a Medium kind of guy. Seeing how I’m starting to use a lot of other types of pens, I also tried numerous gel pens on the notebook only to find they take forever to dry. What’s the point in using a notebook where any good pen is practically useless?

And then you have the Piccadilly. Noticeably cheaper construction, similar look to the Moleskine, and a paper that, at the very least, dries almost instantly with every gel pen I have tested on it. Several of the fountain pens that would make a feathering mess on Moleskine paper actually work quite well on the Piccadilly. Sure, some very wet pens have a feathering problem but nowhere near as many as the Moleskine. It should be noted that the Sharpie Pen works great with every paper I’ve ever tested but I sort of expected that.

And so I bid farewell to the Moleskine. I needed this notebook to perform yesterday’s Moletape review and now it will be shoved in the dark recesses of my desk never to be called upon again. All the fancy marketing and history can’t overcome the great disappointment these notebooks have been to me. Goodbye Moleskine, the Piccadilly shall take your place and no longer will I have to leave the page open to let my ink dry.

When Molecover put out the request for bloggers to review their Moletape, I jumped at the chance and I didn’t even own a Moleskine at the time. I think we all like getting free products, even if it carries the stipulation that we do some work for it. As soon as they confirmed they were sending me one, I ran out and bought a ruled Moleskine to test.

Molecover created this tape to strengthen the binding of the Moleskine which they claim is the weakest point of the notebook. A quick search on Google lead me to several pages where people have created home-brew fixes very similar to the Moletape to fix broken bindings so I assumed these notebooks were quite fragile. In order to give a good review, I wanted to break the spine on my Moleskine and promptly set out to do so. Despite spending a lot of time bending the notebook back and forth, from full closed to both covers open until they touched each other, I couldn’t get any more than a crease in my binding. Maybe I was doing something wrong or I got a strong one, but try as I might, I could not get the binding to crack or split at all. Finally I gave up, I know the problem exists, I just couldn’t manage to break this particular Moleskine.

Unable to destroy the spine, I gave up and decided it was time to install the tape. It’s a simple product and very simple to install so I decided to take you through my install steps.

Naturally to start, you’ll need a piece of Moletape and a Moleskine notebook. According to their website, Molecover is now shipping a piece of Moletape free with every Molecover purchased.

Removing the tape from the backing material was a lot harder than I expected. This isn’t a weak tape, it has a stickiness that surpasses duct tape and as a result, you’re going to want to be very patient during the install. Once I had the tape removed from the backing material, I laid it on a flat surfface, centered the Moleskine as best I could, and carefully pressed the spine down onto the tape.

The next step is simply a matter of rolling the sides of the tape up onto the cover. Take your time here, I ended up with a big crease on one side and it wasn’t too hard to peel back off but a little more patience would have prevented the problem. Using my thumb and sliding it back and forth outward from the spine, I slowly pressed the tape down onto the cover. This will leave the ends sticking out but that’s OK, we’ll take care of that next.

Now we need to fold the ends in. You can do both ends at once, but you want to only focus on the outer flaps that will go over the cover, leave the center section for last. Once you’ve rolled the outer flaps of the tape over the cover, you can move on to the center portion. I’d recommend using something like a house key or something similarly small enough to stick down into the spine. Open both covers so the spine bows outward and then carefully roll the center portion down into the bowed out spine. Again, patience is the key here. Once you’ve got the one end done, flip the notebook over and do the other end.

And there you have it, your Moletape is installed!

I really wish I could have broke the spine to show the repairing power of the Moletape but it’s quite easy to see the additional strength this tape is going to add. Thanks to the very sticky adhesive, I don’t see this coming off easily, and your spine should be able to handle all the opening and closing you can muster. I can definitely see this being a very good investment if you’re a heavy duty Moleskine user.

A couple weeks ago I created a new forum called Stylo Forum for us pen and paper enthusiasts. It’s purposely simple and easy to navigate and I think it fills a void for those of us who like all sorts of pens, not just certain types.

Right now, I have some giveaways going on to try to get some traffic going.

The first person with 25 posts* will win a free pen of my choosing (probably a Preppy or Slicci)

The 25th sign up will win a free Beetle highlighter and a free pen of my choosing (again, probably a preppy or something of that nature)

And first person with 100 posts* is going to win a little prize pack that will contain a Piccadilly Primo Journal and a few other goodies I have lying about.

All you have to do is go to www.styloforum.com, register, and start participating in our discussions. We need your participation to make this little site grow into a nice community of pen and paper fanatics.

*The posts need to be legit. No fair signing up and posting 25 “that’s cool” or posts of that nature.

I spent the entire weekend watching Fringe so today’s post is A. late, and B. quite lame. Maybe if I didn’t put myself under pressure to post every single week day, I’d have better content.

I’m going to admit to being a pen snob. No, I’m not one of those people with a whole collection of (insert high end brand name here) who act as if every other pen is below them, but I was close. I spent the better part of 2 years using fountain pens for 98% of my writing and looking down on pens I perceived to be farther down the food chain. Recently, I’ve begun to address this little problem by adding Sharpie pens and a large number of gel pens to my collection.

I’m not saying I don’t love fountain pens anymore, no way, they’re just too awesome. They possess a soul that no pen with a ball at the tip will ever know. And the manual intervention needed to keep them inked? That’s a huge part of the fun! Who among us hasn’t enjoyed a couple hours with a handful of pens at a basement sink flushing them clean so we can change the color spectrum we have loaded in them? I shall always love my fountain pens but I can no longer act like they’re the only pens on the planet.

And so, I’ve begun purposely exposing myself to other types of pens. I can’t stand normal ball points so those are out of the question, I can’t think of a single reason to keep a ballpoint on hand except for signing credit cards and shiny birthday cards. Other than for those reasons, if I have to reach for a pen and it’s a standard ball point, I shudder. Maybe I still retain a bit of that pen snobbery or perhaps I just hate having to use a pen that requires pressure. I find that Sharpie and gel pens tend to require about the same pressure a fountain pen would need (meaning none or close to none) and that makes them perfect candidates for use when a FP doesn’t work.

So now my man bag is packed full of even more pens. I have Sharpie pens, gel pens, and fountain pens sitting next to each other happily and I’m cool with it. There’s nothing better than having options!

Normally I try to do a review of something on Fridays and I had intended to review the Piccadilly Primo journal, but I don’t feel my review is properly ready. I’ve been a bit under the weather lately and it has me moving a bit slower than normal. I will have that review ready for next Friday or perhaps even a bit earlier during the week.

I’ve been a big fan of the Pilot G-2 for a while, as you saw earlier this week, I have 3 of the different editions. Unfortunately I’ve been having a few problems with them; Of the 3 I have at my desk, 2 have a nasty habit of skipping more than they should and they’re not the smoothest pen I’ve ever felt. Of course, if you haven’t tried anything else, you don’t know what you’re missing. Last night I picked up a Uni-Ball Signo 207 from my local Walgreens as I had heard good things about them and the special ink they use. To my surprise, it was an incredibly smooth writing experience and I even had better luck with the ink drying in my Moleskine (although it still takes a while).

Today I got to thinking, I love the G-2 Limited because it’s made out of metal and has a nice heft, but it has a nasty habit of skipping. Wouldn’t it be nice if it wrote like the Uni-ball and had the fancy 207 ink while still looking good?

So I took them apart and wouldn’t you know it, the refills are almost exactly the same size!

Putting the Uni-ball refill in the G-2 body resulted in the tip sticking out a bit further than it should.

It wrote just fine but it bugged me that the tip stuck out like that. I’m a little weird about my pens and I figured this had to be a simple fix. So I introduced the refill to my X-acto knife. This took a few tries to get the length right. I would shave a little bit off, test fit, and shave more if needed.

The end result is a Uni-ball Signo 207 refill inside a nice hefty Pilot G-2 Limited. All ready to write in delightful smoothness and keep your checks safe from being washed.

Note: Jetpens.com does sell a Uni-ball Signo Premier 207 which appears to be a better built version of the normal 207. Unfortunately they seem to have replaced the rubber end with a mushy gel which I would hate so I’m perfectly happy with my hybrid.

If you’re reading this blog, you probably have a LOT of writing utensils. Some of us prefer pens, some prefer pencils, and we all have that one favorite instrument that we can’t help but keep near us at all times.

So what’s yours? Maybe you don’t like to play favorites but I bet deep down in your brain, you have a favorite. But if you can’t pick one, at least tell us if it’s a fountain pen, a gel pen, or a pencil.

Hit the comments and share!

This week, I coined a new term: “Temporary Failure Environment”. This is an idea I came up with while trying to work through some creative issues. This process most likely isn’t anything new but I stumbled onto it by my own accord so I’ll act like it’s mine for the duration of this entry. I think it will prove to be quite helpful for people suffering from the same creative fright I’ve been paralyzed by.

I’ve been wanting to try my hand at some form of art lately, that’s what started this whole thing. If you have been reading this blog for at least a week, you know that I believe we all battle what I call the “Inner Judge”. This Judge is the reason we know we’ll fail before we even start, he exists to stop our creativity. When you’re facing this judge, the trick is to put the battle outside of his normal turf. How do you do that? You set up a Temporary Failure Environment. It’s amazing what mental blocks are removed when you make it clear to yourself and the Judge that everything is temporary. A page in a sketchbook is more intimidating than a loose page from the same sketchbook. Why? Because our minds see the page in the sketchbook as something permanent while the loose page is not.

Once that loose page is in front of you, it’s simply a matter of accepting that it can be trash at a moments notice. That piece of paper is at your mercy, you either keep it or you destroy it, nothing can stop you. You are free to fail in this environment and it’s completely temporary, there will be no sign of your failure unless you choose to keep it.

Failure is always talked about in the negative but as with anything, it’s not that black and white. When you’re so afraid of failure that you are unable to perform a creative task, you need to introduce failure on purpose. Once you’ve faced failure, it’s no longer such an intimidating foe. Your Inner Judge has very little he or she can say when you make it clear that failure IS an option. Naturally we don’t want to fail forever but the first step to beating the Inner Judge is embracing the failure that has kept your success at bay. Once you have done that, the hard part is past.

I feel this can be applied to writing as well as it’s quite similar to some writer’s block tricks that I’ve read. It’s a little different environment when you’re trying to work through a writers block or having problems with character development, but I still contend that there is some form of Inner Judge being applied that can be defeated if you take him to task outside of his normal environment. Put yourself in a Temporary Failure Environment and open yourself to failure. I have a feeling that if you drop your guard and embrace the impending failure, you will work your way through the blockage. The trick is always to move the fight onto turf where the Judge has no power.

Now… get out there and fail! And then start enjoying your success.