I love fountain pens.

I'd like to give you a romantic story about how I was always drawn to fountain pens until a villain from Pen Island destroyed my bla-bla with colonial capillary action... but I can't. I hated them for many years because they were a) scratchy, b) messy, and c) complicated. To me, they were just a thing we had to use in primary school because gel pens weren't invented yet.

My change of heart began in 2012, when someone I admired tweeted about their love for fountain pens. How could a sensible human person actually find enjoyment in these bloody things? I had to find out.

So, I bought my first fountain pen of adulthood, a cheap plastic Noodlers where you twist the butt to draw ink into an inner chamber. And then I committed THE CARDINAL SIN (altho since this is a n00b mistake, maybe we should call it an "ordinal sin")...

I filled my fountain pen with calligraphy ink. SO BAD!!!

It's the worst thing you can do because calligraphy ink contains sticky particles that forever clog up the tiny grooves inside the pen. But I didn't know this at the time, and so I hated on fountain pens for another decade because my now-ruined Noodlers utterly sucked.

Since hitting middle age, I've been questioning my assumptions about the world. We grow up with ideas about how things are (and how they should be), and merrily we roll along until we hit a wall. Now, I've hit many walls — with relationships, jobs, fitness pursuits, etc. — and I gotta tell ya, it hurts every time. Imagine if you could self-correct before impact. How much more energy would you have in reserve because you're not spending it on damage control?

Writing instruments seemed like a non-threatening, non-confrontational way to start re-evaluating my life. I took a month to re-train the way I hold a pen (not as hard as it sounds, but you will feel pain), vowed to only use appropriate ink, and gave this tool another go.

Three months later, I am now the Pen Island villain of my household, with an army of minions consisting of three fountain pens and seven bottles of ink. Writing by hand is a soothing and sensory affair with a pleasurable amount of scratch transmitted through the nerve endings in my fingers. And because I bothered to learn what to do, the experience is no longer messy or complicated. Fountain pen life has become a tiny oasis of order amidst the chaos.

Inventory of inky villainy

To be an effective villain, you need a weapon stash.

Mine consists of three fountain pens:

• Pilot Metropolitan fine nib
• Herbin Transparent medium nib
• Kaweco Perkeo medium nib

And a modest selection of fountain pen inks:

• J. Herbin "Poussiere de Lune" purple
• Schaeffer Skrip "Blue black" dark grey
• Pilot iroshizuku "take-sumi" black
• Pilot iroshizuku "shin-kai" blue
• Pilot iroshizuku "yama-budo" pink
• Pilot Quink black
• Visconti travel cartridges in blue

Although villains are destructive by nature, I still want to be mindful of the environment when indulging this obsession. I'm not keen on becoming a collector, as this would go against one of the benefits of fountain penning that got my attention — that a reusable, refillable inky pen means less plastics in landfill and less carbon emissions from manufacturing. (Though I'm sure fountain pens and fountain pen ink have their own environmental impacts too.)

Three pens is plenty for everyday use, and I rotate through my stash every few days. I have one super fancy "dream pen" in reserve for if an unusual and momentous circumstance warrants a celebratory purchase. And I have one impossible "someday never" pen that I don't actually want because it's ostentatious and wasteful, but I covet it for fun because it's nice to experience harmless, tongue-in-cheek covetousness once in a while.

There will be no more ink purchases until the aforementioned run out.

Fountain pen media

Fountain Pen and Stationery is my go-to podcast for soothing wallpaper banter about fountain pens and associated gear.

Goulet Pens is a pen shop, but they also have heaps of info about fountain pens, the terminology, travelling with pens, and other stuff you'll want to know.

Fountain Pen Network is a forum for pen enthusiasts.

/r/fountainpens subreddit for when you're in the mood to look at pen pictures.

Scratch & Jotter is a boutique stationery store in Queensland, Australia.