Bujo Pen Desperation

If there’s one thing in the world that I love*, it’s pens. I have all kinds of pens. It doesn’t seem to matter how many pens I have; I just keep acquiring more.

The problem is that no pen makes me 100% happy in all situations. I’m always in search of The Perfect Pen, and I’m getting pretty desperate.

This is the Uni Power Tank, my all-time favorite pen. I love this pen so much that when it seemed like they were being discontinued and my local stores stopped carrying them, I went online and bought a whole 30-pack of them. I just couldn’t fathom not having a Power Tank in my hand! That was so long ago (a decade plus) that my pens are the original capped style that isn’t available anymore. They may be old, but they still work beautifully!

Here’s the problem: I have a beautiful emerald Leuchtturm1917 dotted notebook that I use for bullet journaling. I love this notebook and don’t really want to use any other, but my Power Tank doesn’t work so well in my Leuchtturm. There’s something about the paper that makes the ball not move as smoothly, so the pen puts down a kind of pale, uneven line of ink. Cue sadface!

I love the Leuchtturm, I just need to find a pen that thoroughly satisfies me in it. And unfortunately, I have specific needs:

• It needs to be a black pen.

  I’m pretty set on coloured pens! I just use them for accents anyway. And I’ve never been a fan of blue pens. One look at my artwork and it’s easy to see that I’ve always liked the high contrast of a black pen. {:

• It needs to produce a vivid line.

  It doesn’t have to be a thick line, and it doesn’t have to be blackest black, but it does have to be fairly intense.

• It can’t be too slick.

  There has to be some friction between the paper and the pen tip. Depending on my mood, I can write pretty fast and with plenty of artistic swashes, so I need a bit of drag on the pen tip to keep my handwriting legible without me having to be super careful.

• It can’t be too scratchy.

  There needs to be gentle friction, but it has to be smooth. Scratchy pen nibs are like nails on a chalkboard to me. BIG problem for a lefty since we’re already making the pen scratch more than glide!

• It has to dry quickly.

  Hey, as I said, I’m left-handed. Add to that writing quickly with flamboyant artistic swashes and it’s a recipe for an inked-up hand. So, I need a pen that dries very quickly to prevent the smudgies.

• It has to be quiet.

  Some pens sound sticky at the end of a word even if they don’t feel sticky. In other pens you can hear the pen tip jiggling or springing up and down inside the barrel. One thing I just love about the Power Tank is that it’s solid — there’s no jostling of the pen tip.

In the end, I’m really not looking for a pen to replace my Power Tank for everyday use. I love it so much that I just don’t think that’s possible. So I suppose I’m not looking for The Perfect Pen, I’m just looking for the perfect pen for my Leuchtturm notebook. If I can’t find a pen that does what I need, I won’t find it a pleasure to write in my Bujo, and if it isn’t a pleasure, I won’t use it!

I realize that in the end, this may be an impossible task. I’ve tried a bunch of pens that claim to be quick drying only to run into the same smudgies issue. And some other pens work fairly well in the Leuchtturm but I can’t stand to hold them, possibly because they aren’t a chunky, thick-barreled pen like the Power Tank. So, I may have to give up the Leuchtturm, or just use the Power Tank in spite of its issues in the Leuchtturm. But for now, the search continues.

And this is where you get to chime in! Do you use a Leuchtturm notebook and use a specific pen when writing in it? Do you like a specific pen for any other notebook? Are you a lefty who loves a specific pen? Are you a righty who loves a specific pen? Whatever your flavour, comment below (or email me) and tell me what your favorites are! It will give me inspiration for a future shopping list. :p

* NB: There isn’t just ONE thing in the world that I love. {: