How many notebooks do you have going right now?

"Come home to a real fire... fuelled by notebooks"

Oh, so this is the stationery nerd thread! I love those grey triangular pencils with the rubber grip bobbles schlump said were overrated. Although, I bought a 3-pack because I liked them so much and then realised the ones in the pack didn't have erasers on the end like the ones bought singly do, so that was annoying. And I mainly just like the novelty of the shape and the bobbles and the way they feel in your hand, I admit the line is kind of soft.

0.7mm gel ink pens for me, I love them all. I got some Pilot G-Tec C4s and some unknown 0.3s and I do really like the cleanness of the line at that sort of size but my writing comes out horrible and spidery on such a fine point. 1.0s are too fat for my writing.

I just realised I only have 1 work notebook and 1 German notebook and all my free time ~thoughts~ are digital or not recorded at all and now have a fierce urge to have a more freeform notebook. I do have an unused Moleskine at home but I have this problem with starting notebooks, this paralysing foreknowledge that my horrible scrawl and dumb thoughts will turn a nice notebook into an ugly notebook, and that I have to save them for really special important thoughts which I will get right and write neatly (this moment will never actually come)

I do have an unused Moleskine at home but I have this problem with starting notebooks, this paralysing foreknowledge that my horrible scrawl and dumb thoughts will turn a nice notebook into an ugly notebook, and that I have to save them for really special important thoughts which I will get right and write neatly (this moment will never actually come)

oh, i have this problem. i have a gajillion cute notebooks at home, and i walk around with scratch paper stapled together as my regular notebook. i need to start using them!

Two contradictory ideas, depending on your predilection:

1) learn calligraphy so even if your thoughts are ugly, your notes are not

2) take heart from the idea that even if your handwriting is a scrawl, it is the thoughts and ideas that are important, not the presentation

I was just looking at that pile of Roger Deakin's notebooks and thinking that they were possibly all the more intriguing for being written in such a not-immediately-decipherable scrawl and on fairly generic notebooks which show their age. I could manage that, at least. But not the quantity, or the contents

would still like to do a little better for my birthday present Moleskine with the nice cover, but it's a good motivation for getting some kind of notebook going and not being afraid of the beautiful white paper

(I was never massively into the Manics and the song in question is horrible but I think of the lines "I want to walk in the snow and not leave a footprint / I want to walk in the snow and not soil its purity" every time I look out on fresh settled snow and every time I open a new notebook)

Manics were totally wrong. Gallumping across a fresh snowfall and starting a new notebook are two of the greatest joys in life!

man so can someone explain how you're supposed to use mechanical pencils to me? all the ones I ever used back in like elementary school I either immediately broke the mechanism or somehow ground through the lead in about seven words.

I have seven plus notebooks, there's intercourse all in any of them.

xp 1) buy a mechanical pencil made by a company that makes technical drawing instruments, even if you only get their cheapest pencil, 2) elementary school pencils suck because people generally press too hard on the page when writing with them, 3) the clutch mechanism eventually wears out, even on the best pencils.

because graphite is a lubricant.

4) get one that takes 0.7mm leads, they're the most commonly available size. Those pencils that take the big thick 2mm leads seem to be the worst quality, unless you buy one of the expensive models.

Too many - all sizes - mainly for drawing but one large one with graph paper for taking down music ideas, etc. There's a Muji store near my work and it's hard for me to walk out of there without another new notebook or one of their awesome newsprint books.

the thing that sucks about only writing fiction in pencil is bcz I don't own a dece pencil sharpener and have to go to the local library to sharpen my pencils

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Oh, so this is the stationery nerd thread! I love those grey triangular pencils with the rubber grip bobbles schlump said were overrated. Although, I bought a 3-pack because I liked them so much and then realised the ones in the pack didn't have erasers on the end like the ones bought singly do, so that was annoying. And I mainly just like the novelty of the shape and the bobbles and the way they feel in your hand, I admit the line is kind of soft.

aww. i had real bad handwriting as a kid, & still have fairly bad & serial-killer-ishly-small handwriting as an adult, & i wonder whether some of my distaste for the three-sided pencil is because it reminds me of various gripped writing implements i was given to straighten me out (nb i cannot be tamed). they're okay. i think i just resented having to pay a pound for one at a whsmith, once, knowing that some of the simplest pencils are nicer & more straightforward & cheaper & are don't attempt space-age solutions to pencil needs.

0.7mm gel ink pens for me, I love them all. I got some Pilot G-Tec C4s and some unknown 0.3s and I do really like the cleanness of the line at that sort of size but my writing comes out horrible and spidery on such a fine point. 1.0s are too fat for my writing.

i think the thickest pens i like are those silver uniball ink - they make me feel all drunk & loose, like i careen across the page flamboyantly. muji .38s are still my go-to fineliner (they don't write on skin, which sucks) but for the last six months i've just been plumbing my stationery bag to mix it up a little. the last thing i was really into was a felt-nibbed papermate pen, one of the ones with the white target-mark on the lid. nice. i think those .7 gel pens are good but something about the actual pen doesn't click with me, i don't think i like the biro-y transparent plastic, maybe.

sorry i am turning this forum into one of those forums.

No I love it, I am a huge stationery geek. It was one of the bright spots of those dark years known as grad school.

haha the most consistent writing by hand i do these days is on crosswords, but i am v. particular (and routinely disappointed by my options) about the pens i use

I hadn't found any new pens I liked a lot until recently, but I really love the Uniball Signo - Micro 207. Really consistent ink flow even after months of use.

^^^^ we used to have these at work, but not anymore :(