Use a fountain pen to improve your thinking

I have always enjoyed writing with a fountain pen. When most, well virtually all, of my friends and colleagues use biros, roller balls, and felt tip pens I stick to my fountain pen. When I was a secondary school student I loved pulling pens apart and checking the bits and then putting it together, hoping it would work. Didn't always work.

The Lamy Safari, with a fine nib shown above, is my favourite. I've got Watermans and Parkers in my collectin but it's the Lamy Safari I return to use always.

Not everyone likes handwriting and I've been told at times that writing notes in a notebook and then typing them is double work. But I like the feel of handwriting, I can doodle, draw arrows, make connections, and quickly jot notes in the margin. In fact I think differently when I handwrite. Jack Vinson in a blog about thinking while notetaking. He talks about typing being more linear and careful but

Writing, on the other hand, allows me to make more jumps and smash thoughts
together even when they are not discussed in the same sentence. You might talk about X-Y-Z-A-B-C-Y, and I can lump the Y's together by simply smashing some text into the margin. Or I can draw lines and arrows and conceptually group things with circles and squares. I can also doodle. I can't draw at the computer without finding a different application that breaks my chain of thought.

I came across this in a post of Angela Booth's titled: Writing is thinking: switch to pen and paper and use both sides of your brain.