Notes from the Field
by Jim McCausland

Strictly speaking I'm not a Luddite, but I am strongly attracted to the idea that simpler is better. For that reason alone, I should be a fountain pen user. But I am a fountain pen user for more practical reasons.

The fountain pen is fast. The nib lays down ink on contact with paper, no pressure required, so I can scribble down interview notes for ninety minutes straight without hand cramps. Try that with a ballpoint.
The fountain pen is deliciously slow. The best writing is usually done carefully and deliberately. For me, first drafts come slowly and demand quiet concentration. I usually write just a few words, pause for thought, write a few more words, then pause again. From time to time, I go back and rewrite a phrase or a sentence. It's thoughtful work that's all the more pleasurable when I can do it with a quiet, elegantly designed fountain pen. And because such work is slow, I don't need to do 80 words a minute on an ergonomic keyboard that's attached to a monitor which periodically interrupts me to say "you've got mail".

After I have a story the way I want it, I put the pen away and key the handwritten draft into the computer, refining as I go. Then the text moves on to four or five editors who make changes electronically. When it's right, the story finally goes to press.          

For both writer and reader, the exchange of ideas is all about ink and paper. But it's the writer who enjoys the most sensual part of the transaction: the magic of letting thoughts turn to ink and flow through gold onto lined paper. Journalism schools never teach about this joy (because most professors never discover fountain pens), but it's there for anybody who really believes that simpler is better.
Jim McCausland is a Seattle-based senior writer for Sunset Magazine (www.sunset.com). He just finished working as a senior editor on the 8th edition of Sunset's Western Garden Book, which was released earlier this month. His first fountain pen was a Parker 45 purchased at the Eliot Junior High School book store in Pasadena; his current favorites are a Pelikan 700 Toledo and a Louis Cartier.