Fountain Pens: I’ve given up cheap for the sake of cheap…

I’ve given up buying cheap fountain pens simply because they’re cheap and unique looking.  These are, mostly, Chinese fountain pens and I haven’t had a spit of luck with them.  There’s a Baoer Eight Horses, a pen with an attractive metal (silver, gold or copper finish) barrel decorated with the images of running horses.  Cheap at $6.99 plus shipping, it hasn’t written well since it came in the door.  There’s a Baoer 388, a knock-off of a Parker Sonnett–$6.39, if I remember correctly.  It writes well, once the nib is primed, but that can take some work.  The pen drawer holds a couple of Hero fountain pens which are more stubborn than a tax collector.

Veering away from the Chinese pens, there’s a Noodler’s flex pen, which might flex if I could get it to write well and a pretty little pen from Danitrio’s bargain basement department that’s so stingy with ink, it won’t let a drop go.  There are a couple of Pilot 78G’s, which would write well enough I guess if I bothered to use them, but really, why use them when I have fine-nibbed pens that write better and are of better construction? (I don’t count the Pilot 78G broad nib, which has a stub/italic nib that is really neat and worth more than the $15 I paid for it.)

I haven’t spent a lot of money on these pens, but the fact is I could have saved the money and put it toward one pen of much better quality, whether it was a vintage Sheaffer, a TWSBI or a user grade Parker 51.  When I started collecting fountain pens I was attracted by anything/everything. I’m more focused now.  Fewer pens are coming in the door, and those are pens that will write well and mean something to me.

Latest purchase:  a matte black Sheaffer Targa, fine nib.  Cost: not much more than all the pens above that I just can’t use.

Waterman Carene

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. This road to disaster was started by my husband. Yes, he had good intentions when he asked me what I wanted for Christmas. After a moment of thought I told him: I wanted a nice loupe so I could look at fountain pen nibs and do some alignments and adjustments. You see where the slippery pavement starts, don’t you?

Three weeks ago, with my brand new loupe in hand, I decided to check out the nib on my beloved Waterman Carene. I had bought the Carene back in the summer, a NOS pen in excellent condition, a rich metallic brown with a medium nib to die for. The Carene drank Waterman Havana Brown and looked sharp doing it. It went formal with Private Reserve Midnight Blues and into stealth mode with Aurora Black. As much as I love my other pens, this one quickly became my daily pal, my constant companion. It dressed up, it dressed down. I wasn’t afraid to take it anyplace.

However, the nib did tend to skip on initial down strokes. I suspected it had the baby bottom curse, the tipping on the tines a little too fat and rounded to allow the nib to make good contact with paper. Decided to check it out myself. Sure, I couldn’t grind the nib down myself, but I could at least confirm my suspicions, right?

My Belomo loupe in one hand, Carene in the other, I raised both to make a meeting and .. dropped the Carene flat on the floor. It must have landed nib downward, because the nib was bent like a hooked nose. I was in shock. So much in shock that I fell further along that slippery road to hell that started with my husband’s kind intention. I tried to adjust an inlaid nib myself. Amateurs do not fool with the inlaid nibs on Waterman Carenes. The nib on a Carene is attached to the section by little grips set into the section. Glue is also involved. Adjusting them is a tricky business, not meant for a mortal like myself.

I made it — worse. Looked at the sucker and thought, Lewertowski sells new sections and nibs for $70 plus $20 shipping to the United States, so my bargain $130 pen would become.. well, a $230 pen. I put the pen down and had a glass of Martini & Rossi 1738. It helped my nerves but the pen was still shot.

The Carene is now safely in the hands of nibmeister Michael Masuyama of Mike-It-Work in Peachtree City, Georgia. He told me in a pleasant email that he thinks he can adjust the nib. The cost will be around $40.00 plus the $15.00 handling fee he requires for shipping the pen (priority, insured with delivery confirmation) back to me.

I should have the Carene back in three to four weeks. I miss it terribly. I’ve also learned a lesson–keep a tight grip on a pen when looking at it with a loupe, and think twice before you make a really dumb mistake.

Heavy Lifting-the Peril of Writing Forums

For several years I was a member of one of the best writing forums I’ve ever seen on the Internet.  It was large enough to create synergy, but small enough to be personal and friendly.  I became a moderator of the forum, and then an administrator.

The experience just about ruined my writing.

When I first joined, the forum was relatively new.  The excitement was still there and the membership actively reviewed critiqued work as well as posted their work for review.  The forum had a 1 to 5 rating for work, so people would know what kind of critique the writer was looking for.  Someone who wanted a “1” review was looking for nothing more than encouragement to keep working on their story, and maybe one or two hints on something to review.  Someone who asked for a ‘5’ review wanted a heavy-duty, give-and-take critique, no holds barred!  These were people serious about getting their short story, novel, poem or essay published.

It worked well—for a time.

During my first year with the forum, I received a lot of good help and encouragement for one or two stories I was writing.  Some of the members had real talent in critiquing, which is harder than you think.  I revised some of the chapters with their suggestions in mind.  When I disagreed with the suggestions, it led to good discussion.

Heavy Lifting

Heavy lifting, that was the problem.  After the bloom had worn off, more and more of the reviewing fell to fewer and fewer people.  Those people were (mostly) called Moderators and Administrators.  The membership continued to grow, but more people posted simply to be seen and get a quick pat on the back.  They would “review” a piece that someone had requested a ‘4’ or ‘5’ level review with “hey, looks good to me!”  That was what they called paying back to the forum.

When I was asked to moderate two sub-forums, I felt more responsibility to review and encourage others.  Combined with the responsibilities of moderating, my own writing time suffered.  I vowed that I would take the time to write from some other activity in my life.  Still—heavy lifting.  There were a few of us doing the lifting, and a lot of people getting free rides.

The Life and Death of Forums

The forum was no longer fresh and new.  Both content and reviews weren’t up to scratch.  Membership began to lose interest, moving on to other things.  The forum lost that synergy that made it spark.  In an effort to bring some life back to the forum, the lead administrator began writing more content for the General forum—quick bites of information on entertaining subjects.  The moderators, those who were still around on an occasional basis, were encouraged to join in.  Some did, but any time they spent writing for the board was time they took away from their own work.

After a few months, I was asked to join the administrative team.  It would be a chance to help oversee changes in the forum and direct its future.  Since I wanted to see the board return to some of the spark it had when it was new, I accepted.  Quickly, I found that my role wasn’t so much as a member of a three-administrator team, but to serve as a buffer and sounding board between the board owner and her co-administrator, who locked horns and stomped off in huffs about every other week.

Naturally, in reading the board owner’s two page email complaints about the other administrator, and answering same, I got no substantial writing done.

Forum Meltdown

You knew it was coming, didn’t you?  In an effort to revive the forum, the administrators revamped it.  We gave it a new look.  We culled the membership and invited the best writers, the most active participants, the best reviewers, to join the new club.  It required weeks of work to develop the new board.  This was going to be a real critique forum!

So, what if you gave a party and no one came?  Well, they came, but nothing much happened except what had happened at the first board.  The synergy never returned to the revamped writing board.  The board owner, who had insisted that with the new board the administration would not spoon-feed the membership with new topics, games and original content, went mad to provide the membership with—you guessed it: original content, games and new topics.  For a time, we considered moving the board to another hosting facility.  I spent hours testing Invision Power Board, Vbulletin and Pro-boards.  The board owner never looked at the test boards I set up.

The board closed a few months later.  We couldn’t find a way to reengage the membership, the board owner encountered serious family problems, the second co-administrator did another vanishing act, and the third co-administrator (me) realized that far from helping with her writing, the forum was a weight that wasn’t getting any lighter.

In Retrospect…

…are writing forums a good idea anyway?  If you’re writing a long story or a novel, you post chapters at a time for critique.  Essentially, you’re asking reviewers to critique a work that isn’t in its final form.  You could receive great critiques on chapter three, and write something in chapter eight that means you have to substantially rewrite chapter three.  Published authors also warn writers not to talk about their work too much; there’s too much of a chance you’ll lose that excitement you have about a story if you talk about it.  Forum reviews might work for short stories, when you post the entire work for review, poems, non-fiction articles, but I’ve become wary about revealing too much of a long piece of work.  Sometimes you need encouragement and a pat on the back, but you have to be careful not to lose the spice that makes you want to write that long story or novel in the first place.

I was a member and then an administrator of a very good writing board.  I joined when it was on its upswing and I was there when it died.  The forum was as good as its membership, and the membership was very good in the first, early, days.  In some ways, it was a victim of its own success.  The quality of work and reviews drew more people to the forum, but too many of those were only interested in collecting raves on their own work, not participating in the review process.  Heavy lifting—that’s what a few of us were left to do.  The weight of that heavy lifting exposed other problems in the forum and, eventually, it closed.  The experience has left me with this belief:

When you write, you  have to be your own best reviewer.  There will come a time when you need to get other people to give you an independent critique, but in the beginning—you do your heavy lifting for yourself.

–30–

 

Note: This entry was inspired by a post on Digital Dame’s Filling Spaces blog, about the helium.com writing forum, and her comment about writing forums that a few people do all the heavy lifting. 

The cat that wouldn’t stay still.. and other matters

I met my March goal–by the skin of my teeth.  Things became more interesting in the second chapter when I paused, looked it over, and went back to the start and re-wrote one of the main characters as the arrogant asshole he can sometimes be.  I’d started out with him calm and professional and that was, let’s face it, dull.  I’m going back through the chapters polishing them up.  The follow chapter is substantially written already.   It was one of the first parts of the story to be written.  It needs some heavy editing though.

I am also  contending with a large brown girl cat who keeps walking back and forth across the desk.  When she pauses, it’s right in front of the monitor.  A squeak tells me it’s time for dinner.  I’d really rather her uncle get on the desk.  He at least will settle down on the corner with his feet tucked under him and stare at me calmly and patiently.  I don’t want her brother up here because, at 23 pounds, he takes up more than his share of space.  He likes to sprawl…

Pen of the day:  Waterman Charleston (ivory)

Ink:  Waterman Blue-Black

Raymond Chandler and the Lido Pier

The Big Sleep

Seventy years ago, the Sternwood’s Packard was found washing around in the surf off Lido Pier. When the cops pulled the car out, they found the throttle was set half-way down. Inside the car–Owen Taylor, dead from the impact of a blunt instrument. Who killed the Sternwood’s chauffeur? Did Taylor, who loved the General’s nymphomaniac daughter Carmen, kill Arthur Geiger, a blackmailer who had incriminating photos of Carmen?

When Howard Hawks began filming Raymond Chandler’s crime noire masterpiece, The Big Sleep, he realized that the book never resolves the question of who killed Owen Taylor. Scriptwriter William Faulkner couldn’t figure it out either. The two of them must have poured through Chandler’s convoluted tale of corruption and greed searching for the answer. Finally, Hawks called Chandler. “Who killed Owen Taylor?” “Hell if I know,” Chandler replied.

Seventy years ago, Raymond Chandler penned one of the masterpieces of American detective fiction in three months.  With broad strokes he lined out the plot of a dying man who tries to buy his wastrel youngest daughter out of a jam; of his oldest daughter, smart but jaded, addicted to gambling; of Philip Marlowe, the honorable but world-weary detective who has to dig beneath what he’s told to find out the real mystery Sternwood has hired him to solve.  In the film Vivian Sternwood would be played by Lauren Bacall, in one of her greatest roles opposite Humphrey Bogart, the actor who brought Chandler’s Philip Marlowe to life.

So who killed Owen Taylor?  Eddie Mars, who ran a casino and had his fingers in half a dozen other illegal pies? Joe Brody, a small time hood playing in a game bigger than he could handle, or Carol Lundgren, Geiger’s gunman lover?  Does it matter?  Mysteries go unsolved every day.  In this respect, The Big Sleep mirrors real life.

There Raymond Chandler sits, late at night, hammering away at a typewriter creating possibly the best piece f American detective fiction ever written–in 90 days.  Handing it to his editor and maybe, with a shrug, remembering that Owen Taylor’s murder remained unsolved.  “Hell,  lots of murders don’t get solved,” Philip Marlowe might have said.

I fuss and quibble over a plot and a timeline, worrying about getting all the t’s crossed and the i’s dotted.  Frustrated, I put everything on index cards and start shuffling.  I wonder if Raymond Chandler ever shuffled index cards or worried about whether whether every block in the puzzled fitted together.  Somehow, I know he didn’t.  Raymond Chandler didn’t need no stinkin’ index cards, he just wrote, arriving at the conclusion like Philip Marlow finding a answer to a question that wasn’t asked (what General Sternwood really wanted from Marlowe wasn’t strong-arming Arthur Geiger, but finding out what happened to Rusty Regan) by a mixture of cunning and intuition.

But–that’s Raymond Chandler for you.  I just use index cards.

The secret was.. index cards…

Several posts ago, I wrote that I have a goal to complete two chapters on my thriller by the end of March. I’m happy–no thrilled–to say that I’m sure I’m going to make it. The last two weeks have seen a real turnaround in how I’m working on the story and how I feel about what I’ve written.

It started with–index cards. Just the lowly index card. Part of my problem was being uncertain about part of the plot and the time line of the story. I finished the first chapter in the two-chapter goal, looked at it, and thought. “It won’t work with the time line. I am going to have to friggin’ well dump this entire chapter.” This did not make me happy. Think of it–you spend two weeks bullying your way through a chapter only to say to yourself when you finish, “it won’t work!” I suffered a crisis of confidence. (Translation: I felt very grumpy.)

I’ve kept my outline and story notes in a notebook, specifically an Apica CD-15 notebook, along with legal pad sheets of dialog and ideas. It’s very linear. Written from one page to the next, it’s flat and set. I got a bunch of index cards (alas, I did not care whether they were fountain pen friendly or not…) and put one plot element on each card and then started shuffling. I worked with that for a weekend, and the plot line fell into place. Fortunately, the chapter I had written and thought I would have to dump also fell into place. Scenes and dialog started coming more easily, more naturally to me. I’ve found the groove for this story again.

I’ll make my goal by the end of the month. The chapters won’t be perfect, but I feel like they’ll be good solid first drafts. Even better, I’m looking at the following pieces with a lot more confidence now.

Oh, index card statistics: Rotring 600 w/medium nib and Mont Blanc Bordeaux ink. Waterman Expert II w/fine nib and Private Reserve Midnight Blues ink. Index cards–whatever probably 10 years old from Office Depot, yellowing and fading slightly. There was *some* feathering from the Rotring, who really, who the hell cares? It worked! ~chortle!~

The fountain pen connection…

Yes, I write with fountain pens, therefore I’m odd. This was made clear to me recently when a friend asked about my fountain pens and how I used them. I said I kept a journal with them, that I write fiction and non-fiction and draft my ideas with pen and paper. I said that I like the history of pens and the feel of good paper.

Parker 51, midnight blue w/gold cap

She honed in on the word “journal” and sped off on a tangent. “You can keep one on your computer, you know.” Amazing. Who woulda thunk it?

Yes, I know about computers, and Word for Windows and blogging. I even know about a little remembered program called Qedit, which was my first word processor back in the days when Peter Norton had hair. (Okay, Peter Norton still has hair, but he doesn’t have Norton Utilities anymore, does he?) She charged ahead, talking about how she kept a diary on her computer, so convenient for putting in photos of the kids and vacation snapshots, and emailing parts of it hither and yon.

I listened and, although I managed to get one or two words in, it was plain; I was missing the boat. Why use pen and paper when a computer and software can make writing easier, more flexible and, certainly, more decorative!

So, this is it, this is why I at times choose to use fountain pens and paper. Much of my life is already electronic. Sometimes I think more of me is bound up in digital 1’s and 0’s than is good for anyone. Computers are part of my work–reports, accounting, correspondence, online research. When I’m in the office, I’m in front of a computer. I moderate an online forum for an international singer. My electronic footprint is on the forum everyday. I maintain a website for said international recording artiste; more 1’s and 0’s expended into cyberspace. I keep two blogs.

I have enough “digital” in my life already. Pens and paper are my way of escaping from the digital and scurrying back to analog safety. I like the feel of putting pen and ink to paper. It’s solid, grounded, creative. It’s a return to a more studied, thoughtful pace. The feel of writing on good paper is a tactile pleasure. In this increasingly digital world, I find myself turning more frequently to fountain pens and paper as a way to untie myself from the computer.

Computers, pens, paper–they’re tools. No one tool is right for every job, and sometimes the best tool for the job is not the electronic box sitting on the floor by the desk.

The cat show economic stimulus program…

Chrysler and GM are seeking up to$39 billion in bailout funds, the Nation (that would be us, the Taxpayers) is already committed to bailing out failing banks and insurance companies. The nearly $800 billion stimulus package should keep government printing press operators working overtime for the next few months, and our kids paying off the debt for the next 200 years. My! My! Time Flies!

But does this stimulus package really get “down there” to the little people, people like us, who don’t own a bank or an insurance company or a U.S. car company? My husband and I considered this last night over the dinner table. Big companies who have done a crappy job over the last 20 years are getting massive amounts of bailout money, to help tide them over during the rough times and fund their 2010 Superbowl party, and conferences at Las Vegas resort hotels, and whopping bonus packages to CEO’s. (Glad to know they’ve got their priorities straight!) Meanwhile, small companies like our’s, that have done a pretty darn good job for the last 20 years, are getting nada. It just ain’t fair, ya know?

We want a bailout, too. Not a big one, mind you, just a small one. We think $750,000 is a nice roundish number, and with GM and Chryster getting $39 billion, it’s a drop in the bucket. It’ll never be missed.

Grand Premier Clannad

We call it the Family Treecat Cat Show Stimulus Bill. For those of you who don’t know, two of our Maine Coons are show cats, recently retired from the ring with Grand Poobah awards, pretty photographs, ribbons & accolades, and major attitude problems about how important they are.

What we propose is to use part of our modest bailout money to purchase two Maine Coon kittens and take them to the show hall. Anyone who’s ever shown a cat or dog knows this is a major financial undertaking. Yet it is one where money is disseminated to many different people and industries, spurring their productivity and enabling them to spend money and stimulate the economy.

First, there’s the breeder, who spends enormous sums of money on food, litter, veterinary care, not to mention their costs in showing their animals. Buying their kittens enables them to maintain their hobby and avocation, and spend money doing it.

Showing cats supports transportation (gas for the car to haul the little moggies from show to show); the hotel and food industries. By giving us a small bailout, numerous pet-friendly LaQuinta hotels will benefit, along with Cracker Barrel and Waffle House restaurants! How’s that for spreading the wealth! Cat show registration fees keep cat show judges in business. The more cats that are in a show, the more spectators drawn to the show. The more spectators and cat show people at a cat show, the more money spent at the vending tables and booths selling pet products, including cat toys, cat shampoos, cat food, cat furniture, cat jewelry, cat clothing (for people, not for cats, who really wouldn’t want to wear a lot of what gets sold…)

As you can see, we’re not talking peanuts here (and especially not Peanut Corporation of America peanuts). The massive amounts of money spent to run cats for Grand Poobah awards has specific benefits for the “little people” of America, down at the grass roots level, who somehow seem to be missing out on the big bailout bucks the car companies, banks and insurance companies are getting. Yes, if they can get bailout money for being stupid (we’ll politely leave “greed” out of the equation), surely people like you and me can get bailout money for doing things right?

Yes, the Cat Show Economic Stimulus Package is a modest plan. Yet, I feel it is an effective one and, unlike the “big guys” we prommise to document every expenditure of our bailout funds. We’ll provide receipts for show registrations, food, travel costs, pet care needs. At the end of the show season, we promise to provide proof-of-success coupons in the form of Grand Poobah certificates to whatever new (and flabby) government agency is formed to oversee the bailout program.

We’re drawing up our bailout plan now, and we’ll see you at the cat show later!

Dealing with distractions: writing

I have a goal: complete two chapters of a mystery/thriller I’m writing by the end of March.  Raymond Chandler and Ian Fleming could pen entire novels in three months, but they didn’t have my family to contend with, they didn’t have flu for a week, or the increased work load brought on by a declining economy.

It’s inevitable that whenever I ensconce myself in my little home office to write, that something (in the form of a husband usually) wanders in demanding instant attention and answers to critical questions.  Where’s the big flashlight?  (I don’t know, I never use it.) What’s this charge on the credit card statement? (This has to be answered now?).  Things would fine if I could answer the question and that was it, but no.  As sure as night follows day and Roma Ryan penned Orinoco Flow, hovering follows, a sense that we must converse on something else! 

It’s not that I don’t want to answer questions or converse, I just want to do it later!   J.K. Rowling was lucky that she was divorced when she started Harry Potter No. I.  If she had been married, she never would have gotten to No. 7.  One of my favorite authors is mystery writer Sue Grafton.  If you go to Sue’s website, you’ll find photographs of her office.  You look at those photos and just know that Sue is never bothered by family distractions, credit card chatter or requests to find tools that she never uses. 

I have a goal.  I’m sure I’m going to meet it, but being an amateur writer dealing with all the distractions of the family republic doesn’t make it easy.

Staples eco-easy composition books

I got real excited when I heard about Staples new line of environmentally friendly composition books, legal pads and loose-leaf filler paper, made of pulped bamboo waste. My eyes drifted to the kitchen window with its view of an acre of formerly ornamental bamboo growing wild in the ravine behind our house. Could paper products be the answer to our prayers? My mind was filled with the idea of selling the invasive crop to a paper factory to be ground up and turned into cheap, fountain-pen friendly paper! Maybe we could finally build that deck over the ravine without fear that it would be swallowed up by 20-foot tall stalks that look like they came straight out of Day of the Trifids.

Alas, I found out the eco-easy line is not made from bamboo waste, but pulped sugar cane (bagasse) waste. Hell, another opportunity blown. I can’t even get the panda keepers at the zoo interested in our bamboo crop. It’s the wrong kind of bamboo.

However, I degress. The fact is, I went to Staples and picked up one of the $2.49 eco-easy composition notebooks, and I’m impressed with its quality. This inexpensive paper is not what you want to use to write a letter to your grandmother thanking her for gifting you the family heirloom silver. It doesn’t have the archival properties to use for writing that you want to keep for a long time, such as a journal. However, for every day use as a project notebook or to keep on the desk to jot down notes, this cheap, fountain pen friendly, paper may be just about perfect.

The Cover: I’m not a fan of the junior high school composition books with those black and white marbled covers and the wide spaced lines. The cover of the eco-easy composition books is heavy, rough, brown stock. The thick fibers in the card stock give it a nice texture. Overall, it has a plain-brown-paper wrapper sense of efficiency. The covers come in several simple designs, which do not detract from the sturdy, functional look. I picked a notebook with a with a single flowing light green leaf of a sugar cane. The cardstock covers are stiff enough to make the notebook usable hand-held or balanced on your knee. The 100 pages are stitched into the cover. In a pinch, you can fold paper and cover back on itself to write

Paper: The paper is thin, almost airmail weight, with an extremely smooth surface. It’s a soft white paper with light brown lines. Staples eco-easy products are made with environmentally friendly vegetable inks, which is nice, although I never thought ink was an environmental hazard.

Pen and Ink Test: I tested the paper with two pens I use frequently and several inks: a Waterman Carene with a medium-fine cursive italic nib and Private Reserve Midnight Blues ink; a Waterman Charleston with a medium nib, loaded with Mont Blanc black; the Carene again with Waterman Havana Brown and South Sea Blue ink. Despite the very smooth surface, ink went onto the paper without feathering and dried quickly, perhaps more quickly than on the paper of the Apica A610 journal that I use.

The Carene with Private Reserves Midnight Blues ink is something of a dry writer on most papers. Its performance on the eco-easy composition book paper was outstanding. It was extremely smooth on the paper, leaving a wetter and wider line than normal. Amazing-a $130 pen with a $50 customized nib flees from Rhodia and Apica paperstock to find happiness with a store-brand $2.50 notebook. Life is strange. It’s like hoping your daughter will marry a brain surgeon, and instead she falls in love with a guy named Spike who rides a Harley.

I would talk to them about this odd mismatch, but they’ve just informed me they’re expecting a case of index cards in nine months…

I also tested the Carene with Waterman Havana Brown and South Sea Blue inks. These two flow more freely in the Carene than the Midnight Blues. The Havana Brown looked good on the soft white paper. The color was a paler brown that I get when I use this ink with my Pelikan M250, the line was slightly wider than with the Midnight Blues. I liked the look of it on the paper. The South Sea Blue was wide but too pale. It looked like a Caribbean carnival had come to town. I wrote a page with it and then dumped it from the pen.

The Charleston has a medium nib that’s very broad and bullyish, kind of like our big Maine Coon boy. When this pen writes a line, you notice it. Despite writing such a wet line, ink did not bleed through to the other side of the paper

In all cases, I did not experience a problem with ink bleeding to the other side of the page. There is always some see-through and, with a wet medium nib the see-through is more prominent, but it wasn’t such a problem that it prevented use of both sides of the paper. For my uses of these notebooks, the see-through isn’t a problem.

Line spacing: This surprised me. As I said, I’m not crazy about high-school ruled notebooks, and this is the first time in years I’ve written in a notebook using wide line spacing. After I got used to it, I liked it. I found myself writing larger to take up the line space and, in return, I found myself forming my letters more carefully and clearly. For me, improved handwriting is a bonus.

Summary: For $2.49 you get 200 pages of smooth paper in a well-made composition book that looks adult enough not to be an embarrassment if you’ve moved beyond junior high school. It won’t have the cache of Rhodia or Moleskeine. You won’t use this and pretend you’re Hemingway writing from a sidewalk bistro in Paris, which seems to be the whoopla of Moleskeine’s marketing program. Staples gives you a book of paper you can use freely without counting the costs each time you turn a page. Give it a try. You’ll probably like it, and if you don’t, hand it to the kids. There’s no way you can lose with this composition book.