Review: Custom ground italic Pilot Varsity

Did you read that title and say “What? Who grinds disposable pens?” Good, that was the point. I myself had never considered messing with the Pilot Varsity but if you think about it, what better pen to practice on? They’re only a couple bucks a piece and if you ruin one, who cares?

But this isn’t about me trying my hand at grinding, this is a plug for the work of Dan Smith. You may know him as @mr_maxim on twitter or by his website, dannzeman.com. He’s been doing pen repair for a while and when he offered me a custom ground Varsity to try, I jumped at it.

Why would I be excited about such a lowly pen? If you’ve never used a Varsity, you’re missing out. It’s the poster child for how great fountain pens can be without costing a fortune. I absolutely love the blue ink color and when I opened the package from Dan and saw that he had ground a blue one, I was elated. I’d keep blathering on about it, but I already sat down and did a mini-review with my chicken scratch. Click the below picture to see a much larger version.

As you can see, the line variation is just about perfect. In fact, I think it has inspired me to get something a bit more expensive ground in the same fashion. As noted in the written part, I’m sending him a Vacumatic to repair after the holidays so I’ll have more info on Dan’s work very soon.

As a disclaimer, I never checked with Dan to see if he sold these. I know he gifts them to some of his customers, but don’t be offended if he won’t sell you one. I’m just giving him props for a job well done, I don’t want to put words in his mouth.

QOTW: What’s your pen collection focus?

For months I updated this blog at least 5 days a week as if I had some unending fountain of words from which to draw on. After taking a month off for NaNoWriMo, I find it almost impossible to think of things to write. And so, I’ve moved the Question of the Week to Monday for now. I figure that’ll give me something easy to come up with on the worst day of the week.

Those of us who are pen fanatics tend to accumulate pens. You might not consider yourself a collector one day and the next, you realize that you’re surrounded with <insert pen type here>. For me, I’ve mainly focused on Sheaffers with a minor interest in Parkers. I’m no collector and I’ve been quick to sell off pens when I feel like spending money on something else, but that’s not the point of this.

Take a look at your pen collections, what do you see? Maybe you collect fountain pens of random types, maybe you’re a gel pen fanatic, maybe you are one of the crazy souls who simply must have every color that the Sheaffer No Nonsense came in?

Now that you’ve figured out what you are, direct yourself to the comment box and share with us. We’ll all understand your crazy obsession, trust me, we’re all family here.

Review: Quo Vadis Habana

In my handful of years deep in the midst of the crazy pen people (that’s what I call you all, don’t worry, I’m included in that grouping), I’ve went through a bunch of phases.

The first phase was the “any paper is fine” attitude, we’ve all probably been there once we learned that it simply wasn’t true. That quickly let go to the second phase which was when I discovered Black n’ Red notebooks and decided I had no reason to look further. To be honest, I probably could have kept using their notebooks and been perfectly happy, the Black n’ Red line is great. But alas, that’s not what happened, I started trying to branch out. And that brings us to the third phase where I just went nuts buying notebook after notebook trying to find something else I liked.

Of course we all know I’m a Rhodia fan (who isnt?) and I’m also a fan of Piccadilly and I bet if I ever opened this Ciak journal I bought months ago, I’d probably love that too. Hmmm wasn’t I supposed to be reviewing something? Ah! I remember where I was going, I wanted to point out that I learned something else about myself; I hate small notebooks for journals. At the moment, I’m trying to use a small Rhodia Webbie as my journal and I find I rarely use it because the small size is uncomfortable to me. The notebook itself is great, I just don’t care to use the standard 5×5.5″ notebook for a journal. Lucky for me, the Webbie comes in a larger size so I’ve just added that to my list of things to purchase in the future. It’s a long list.

You’re still wondering what that has to do with the Quo Vadis Habana, right? Well let’s just cut to the chase, this notebook embodies the notebook I think I can see myself using as a journal. It’s the right size, it has the right paper… I’m getting ahead of myself.

Let’s start off with the form factor. The Habana I’m reviewing is the large version and it measures 6″x9″ according to the packaging (Quo Vadis website says 6 1/4 x 9 1/4). That, in my mind, is the perfect size for sitting down at a desk and cranking out page after page of … whatever you put in your personal journal.

The cover is a bit hard to explain, it’s soft to the touch yet slightly rigid. The top layer is so soft, in fact, that the elastic enclosure (which isn’t strung super tight) still leaves marks in the edges of the cover. While it feels soft, I don’t think you’ll be bending it into a U shape, I sure didn’t try it for this review. There’s something to be said about the appearance, it’s one of understated elegance and I’d have to say that something about it makes it one of the sexiest notebooks I’ve reviewed thus far.  It also opens to almost flat which is something I really look for in a bound notebook.

The Habana seems to take cues from the ever popular genre of the black notebook. From the elastic enclosure, to the marker ribbon, to the expanding rear pocket, it offers all of the most popular features of the genre. Is that wrong? No way! It’s what the people want and have come to expect and there’s a reason for that.

Let’s face it, the sexiest notebook in the world doesn’t mean squat if the paper isn’t quality stuff. If you’ve read my reviews on the other Exaclair products, you already know where I’m going with this. Inside the beautiful cover is 80 sheets of crisp white 90 gr Clairefontaine paper. Do I even need to say anything else? Ask 25 notebook fanatics who has the best paper and I bet Clairefontaine falls into the top of your answers if not the very top. I’m not even going to bore you with a writing sample as I plan on using this for my personal journal and well, I have problems writing on beautiful objects. The first words to be entered into these pages shall be personal, it’s just that nice of a piece.

What I have here in my hand is a very sharp notebook that’s just waiting to be filled with your deepest darkest secrets. At the $20 price tag, I assume you won’t be buying this for meeting notes at work but for filling with words that might mean something to you or someone else one day, it’s the perfect choice.

Thanks to Karen at Exaclair for providing me this notebook to review. I feel truly honored to have had a chance to test out their products and as you can probably tell I haven’t found one I don’t like yet.

I’m supposed to edit this?

Now that NaNoWriMo is behind me, I have my first novel in my hands and I’m now faced with the inevitable next step; the editing process. To me, this is almost more of a daunting task than the writing was, I don’t even know where to start. I’ve read some suggestions but it seems like every writer has a different idea of how to edit, when to edit, and the sequence of the editing steps.

I started by printing the novel so I could hold it in my hands. This seemed like a better option than trying to read it on the computer screen and making edits on the fly. If I make notes in the margins, they’re not changed yet, they’re just suggestions. Then I can come back after my initial read through and see if I really think my notes apply.

One of the biggest problems I see ahead is dealing with the ending. I sort of chopped the end off in a cliche sort of way and I really want to continue with the story and end it properly. Unfortunately that probably means I’ll be adding a lot more to the story. I also know there are numerous occasions where I started a scene with more than one character and then forgot about everyone but the main character. Those areas are going to demand a major rework to fix my oversight.

I’ve read that the best way to edit is to focus on fixing the story first, then worrying about grammar and sentence structure and things of that nature. I plan on trying to tackle my story in this same manner. I certainly hope this is the most effective way of editing!

Anyone have any other good editing tips they’d like to share?

NaNoWriMo 2009 Afterthoughts

Whew! NaNoWriMo is over and I’m sort of … sad? It’s funny how your mind can change from fear and uncertainty at the beginning of the month, to the complete opposite at the end. Well, I suppose that’s not true if you don’t win but lucky for me, I did! I didn’t think I’d make it, but I came out alive with a word count of 50,203.

What did I learn from the month long experience? A lot! It’s not easy sitting down and writing anything that long and I’m sure the first time you do it is always the worst. Here’s a few things I learned along my journey.

• If it’s your first time (or maybe second, third, whatever) you probably want to make this as easy on yourself as you can. I started with a story idea but it felt like I was dragging it out of my head through a swamp. Six days into the process, I dropped that story and changed subjects to something I’m very comfortable with. I think the worst thing you could do on your first try is venture down a road that you’re not familiar with. Simply changing subjects helped me write a lot faster and the story sort of just came out.
• Ditch the editor. It’s SO hard to try to not think about what you’re writing but you must! Early on it’s a bit of a chore but you must put your head down and run past that mean old editor! Once you get used to pouring words onto a page without the editor’s interference, you become a lot more relaxed.
• One thing I didn’t do was plan anything out. I had a piece of paper with some character names scribbled on it and that’s about it. If I had it to do over again, I might like to plan out the scene of the novel a bit more, re-think the characters and the number of them (I have WAY too many nameless characters in my novel), and maybe think about how I want it to end. I like to leave the middle open for the characters to weave their own story, but my ending sucks!
• Don’t lose track of your characters! I have at least 4 scenes where I started out with 2 characters and ended up just focusing on one. I would be three thousand words in before I realized I had lost the other guy in my memory. Oops! Again, probably something I could have avoided with a little planning.
• If you have a day where you really get in the groove of writing, wring as much of that out as you can! There are enough days where you struggle that it’s worth it. I did find that those days where I struggled, sometimes just hammering through a few hundred words would get things flowing nicely.

I guess that’s the basics. In the end, I have a novel that I wrote myself and even though I know it’s poorly written and needs major work to be good enough to share with anyone, I’m still extremely proud of myself and looking forward to editing it. I even started a new novel, imagine that!

To all the winners, congrats. To all those who tried, there’s always next year. Keep hammering at it!