might sound a little weird, but when i do write on paper at home (for a book or just a letter to someone - which is actually something i’ve been doing more often) i use a glass dip pen because, for some reason it’s more comfortable and easier for me to write without my hands going all achey. dk how to explain it. but because it’s not really something people usually use, i stick with a 0.5 thin gel pen (black and also with colour sometimes) in public, which isn’t that often; only at work.
For pens, it’s both gel and ballpoint. I have this set of ballpoint pens that are easy to find but so expensive and they are INCREDIBLE for writing with. They’re so smooth and the ink barely smudges. They feels so nice to write with. But I can only get them when they’re half price or less
I use mechanical pencils out of habit from high school
yeah! exactly like a quill pen! but without the feather. it’s pretty nice tbh, it’s the first kind of pen that i actually love to use. also comes with whatever colour ink that you want! i use mainly black, but every now and then i use glitter colourful ink (mostly when i’m journalling.)
gel pens are really good, because of what you mentioned - it’s smooth when you write with it, it flows beautifully on a page.
I prefer blue gel ink pens for writing. Ball-point pens feel like they’re scraping along the paper, and they’re often uncomfortable to hold for long periods…The curse of big hands…For some reason I don’t like writing in black ink, maybe because it blends into the pages’ lines (or the printed text). Only downsides of gel pens is they run dry too fast, and their price.
I try to avoid writing in pencil because the line thickness is not constant, and the lead always fades over time.
Update: for writing paper, aim for notepads / notebooks / journals with a GSM above 90. They tend to hold the ink better with low bleed-through.
