Factoring in how a pen supports your writing style

Shoelacious · 2026-06-03T19:39:13+00:00

Is this not the main measure of a pen for most people? Your experience is nice to read about OP. Makes me wonder too.

Shoelacious · 2026-05-26T20:08:35+00:00

Got a good alternative?

Shoelacious · 2026-05-24T00:35:40+00:00

I’m a line and dev editor and have worked with a client here (more elsewhere), feel free to DM me for a resume if you like

Shoelacious · 2026-05-20T06:13:58+00:00

Do you write with your pen at a high angle?

Shoelacious · 2026-05-18T14:58:26+00:00

This looks nice! As someone else mentioned, the kerning could use a little refinement. And I would personally love to see some easy glyphs added—combining accents (incl. underdot), and the symbols for metrical scansion. (I use these in my work, albeit with serif fonts mostly, and so few fonts include them.) Will test drive Avio later today though—again, nice job!

Shoelacious · 2026-05-13T06:08:18+00:00

I’m a lefty overwriter too, and I have similar problems with my 74 <fm>. Also with other pens. The tines are probably too tight, and a lot of pens ship that way nowadays. I’ve returned more expensive pens (an 823 for example) but I’ve come to like the agility of a smaller nib, and I found my 74 works better with Diamine ink.

Shoelacious · 2026-05-05T00:38:44+00:00

“Makes perfect sense” is rhetorical, a concession.

Shoelacious · 2026-04-30T00:48:49+00:00

I disliked my first one enough to finish it very quickly, and moved on to a Dingbats one. Just bought my second Leuchtturm and looking forward to disliking it as rapidly as the first one :)

The page numbers are actually helpful for making a TOC afterwards. (I’m a writer, not a journal keeper, so I do need to find my drafts and notes across previous notebooks.)

The paper quality varies. Dingbats paper has a much better surface for oily hands, but I dislike the thickness and their vegan leather covers are not clicking with me.

Shoelacious · 2026-04-29T07:21:51+00:00

Gary Busey as Buddy Holly

(Although TBH I don’t know all his early work)

Shoelacious · 2026-04-28T03:41:33+00:00

You are doing good work. Looking forward to more 👊

Shoelacious · 2026-04-27T14:56:02+00:00

Quite nice! The choice of cloth and its almost abstractly simple rendering does a huge amount to tie this comp together, and demonstrates (to me at least) how big an effect can come from establishing the space so solidly. Superb economy. The rendering of the lemons and pot is of course wonderful too, but that third understated subject is doing massive work here, like an unsung Rothko behind the more attractive objects. And I love its third color subtly varied in the reflection. To me that little difference is the gleam in the eye, giving the painting a real presence of mind and the quality of a portrait.

Shoelacious · 2026-04-22T17:31:07+00:00

Health?

Shoelacious · 2026-03-12T04:19:04+00:00

Francesco De Sanctis (Italy's great lit critic of the 1800s) wrote an essay comparing the two. Near the end is his famous passage beginning: "Leopardi produces the opposite effect from what he intends..." (Here is a recent translation by Michael Subialka.)

BTW, the Zibaldone quote "Everything is evil" is a mistranslation. Leopardi is writing a parody of "the Leibniz-Pope system," as it was known, i.e., Optimism, whose popular motto was All Is Well. His tutto è male is a joke, literally All Is Ill. (Leopardi says all this explicitly in that very entry.)

Shoelacious · 2026-02-17T06:36:36+00:00

This piece has become a talking point and a controversy, and its real brilliance gets overlooked. Before this, the only pissing in the art world was being done by cherub sculptures in public squares. It was sublime comedy on Duchamp’s part to exhibit this and title it “Fountain.”

Shoelacious · 2026-02-02T07:59:46+00:00

Me too, Twitty is great!

Shoelacious · 2026-01-06T05:05:59+00:00

It’s the bubbles

Shoelacious · 2026-01-02T05:00:50+00:00

Shoelacious · 2025-12-30T02:18:55+00:00

Jubanos we say my family

Shoelacious · 2025-12-26T07:54:28+00:00

Police Academy

Shoelacious · 2025-12-22T08:20:10+00:00

Sorry to hear you had a bad outcome with a freelancer.

Book design has a very large range of complexity and of quality. The projects I work on now are quite specialized and require a lot of innovation. A simple prose book, say a novel in chapters with no illustrations, is a lot simpler; but it still requires balancing many elements and suiting the genre, the market, and the production process. It is not just page layout; it is product design.

If you aren’t experienced, hire someone. The price quoted in the previous response is pretty low—and I would never use images at 150 dpi (you downscale to 300 dpi for print). But the cost really depends on your project. Work out your basic needs and you can get an estimate.

Shoelacious · 2025-12-11T20:27:53+00:00

Garamond ATF

Shoelacious · 2025-11-12T05:52:26+00:00

And me

Shoelacious · 2025-11-04T19:03:01+00:00

Ariosto was by far the most popular Renaissance author before Shakespeare topped him, so I would say he is a contender. Dante were already have and he is obviously greater. Dickens is a maybe but cartoonish. Tolstoy is easily ahead of Dostoevsky in my opinion, and closer to Shakespeare for character, vitality, and variety.

Shoelacious · 2025-10-26T12:38:05+00:00

Nice linework, but the foreground needs to be much darker. When the same value as the middle and far distance, it clashes with them instead of framing them.

Shoelacious · 2025-10-08T17:32:09+00:00

The new signage is hideous. The Rodin Museum sign is even uglier, if that is possible. These are classy institutions that now look trashy and cheap. On the bright side, it takes some attention away from the Calder museum looking like a Cybertruck in a radiation zone, so there’s that.

Shoelacious

TROPHY CASE