Posts filed under Writing

Lessons Learned from Valentina

(Kimberly (she/her) took the express train down the fountain pen/stationery rabbit hole and doesn't want to be rescued. She can be found on Instagram @allthehobbies because there really are many, many hobbies!.)

As you may recall, I have been working on my Italian by copying/transcribing books. I started copying a pocket Italian Grammar book, which sounds exactly as fun as you think. Fortunately, I found the Italian children’s books that I bought years ago and decided I would read/copy one of them. After all, I was also copying The Little Prince (“TLP”, which is also a children’s book,) so why not an Italian one?

The book I picked is called “Un amico Internet per Valentina” (or “an Internet friend for Valentina) by Angelo Petrosino. Valentina is a 10 year old Italian girl who goes to elementary school, where she ends up getting a penpal from England and also an Internet penpal (yes, her father is nervous about this but it’s a nice kids book, not my usual murder mystery, lol).

*This is the second book in the series (I’m waiting for the first book to arrive.)*

With illustrations, large fonts, and even large chapter titles, the book was under 200 pages. So I picked an A5 Nebula Casual Note spiral notebook with 120 pages of their 90 gsm white paper. I was going to take a gamble and hope that would fit, but no big deal if it didn’t. (Spoiler: it fits, phew!)

*This is the Nebula Casual Note. I like the minimalist starry decoration in the upper right corner.*

I hadn’t used the Nebula paper in a few years so it was a nice change of pace from the usual Rhodia, Leuchtturm or Tomoe River. It has a bit of texture, almost like Midori Cotton. I used saturated inks, shimmer inks, and shading inks and had no problems with feathering or bleedthrough. Overall, I enjoyed using this paper, but I quickly discovered that I did not like side-bound spiral notebooks. As a right hander, I had no problems when writing on the right side of the page, but flip to the other side and omg, my hand would dig into the coils as soon as I got to the right half of the page.

*Written with Rohrer & Klingner Solferino, which has a slight golden sheen which you can see here.*

*I wonder if it would be better or worse if it was a spiral (single) versus the double coil.*

Unlike TLP, this is a physical book, which required me to use a book stand because (1) I don’t have room on my desk to lay out a book AND write in my notebook, and (2) so it’s easier to read when it’s propped up. Thankfully, I had bought a bookstand for this project - you can find it at The Gentleman Stationer. I love that it is foldable and has a low profile so it can sit flat on my desk without taking up a lot of room. You can also adjust it to a couple different angles, and use it with books/notepads/etc of varying thicknesses.

*This metal book stand lays pretty flat when collapsed.*

*You can see the 3 notches on the bottom of the stand which holds your book at different angles.*

While I still prefer transcribing an eBook versus a paper book because I can change the font size and I don’t have to worry about schlepping a book around, I enjoyed the tactile sensation of flipping a paper book and eyeballing how much of the book or chapter is left (without relying on my Kindle app’s stats). It’s just a nice change of pace for me, since I do all my reading on the Kindle app.

With TLP, I (1) wrote almost all of it in cursive, (2) used a different pen/ink combination per page, and (3) only wrote on one side of the page because I was using a 52 gsm Tomoe River notebook. With Valentina, I changed it all up!

For starters, I wanted to do something a little different than the cursive writing I used in TLP, but I couldn’t decide on cursive versus print. And we know that the answer is always “both” whenever there’s a choice to be made! So I chose a style that is a slightly different style of my usual cursive as well as simple print, which I don’t usually use.

*I asked IG folks which one they preferred and most of them said cursive.*

Since I wasn’t planning on making IG posts for every page like I did with TLP, I decided to use that style for a whole chapter, regardless of how many pages it took. It was nice to get a few pages of practice, which really helped with improving my consistency, especially for print, which I don’t do nearly as much as cursive.

*I wrote ~2-3 pages per chapter before switching styles.*

This last one, it’s a doozy, at least for me. Ready for this? I wrote with one pen in this notebook until the pen was empty. I didn’t use the pen for any other purpose. Not only that, I decided to pick higher capacity pens too! No Kaweco mini-converters here! For someone who routinely has 48 inked pens in order to switch it up multiple times a day, doing this was pretty extreme! I know a lot of folks regularly write with one pen until it’s empty but not me! I left these pens at home so they wouldn’t accidentally get used while at pen meetups or in my regular day-to-day writing. I was also kind of curious how many pages it would take to empty out a pen, so it was a fun experiment!

*I used the following pens to copy the book: Nahvalur Original Plus, Pilot Custom 823, TWSBI Eco-T, Pelikan M205 and Leonardo Momento Magico (which isn’t empty yet.)*

*I didn’t think to make this log until the third pen, which is why the first two entries are also in purple.*

I had no idea how many pages it would take to write a pen dry from start to finish, but it took as few as 13 pages with the Pelikan to 34 pages with the TWSBI Eco-T. In all cases, I filled the pens to as much as they can be filled, including expelling air from the vac fillers to top them up. Thank goodness Fountain Pen Companion made it easy for me to track all of this!

Here are some stats:

199 physical pages (includes pictures, etc) -> 97 handwritten A5 pages
5 high capacity pens used (the 5th pen still has ~10 pages of ink left)
- Nahvalur Original Plus, Medium nib - 22 pages
- Pilot Custom 823, Fine Medium - 26 pages - I would have expected to get more pages due to the FM nib.
- TWSBI Eco -T, Medium - 34 pages - Wow, I am shocked I got more out of this pen than the 823!
- Pelikan M205, Medium - 13 pages - I know it’s a smaller pen than the others but I didn’t expect it to have that much less writing capacity.
- Leonardo Momento Magico, Medium nib - 11 pages so far. I’m pretty sure there’s another 10-20 pages worth of ink left.
4-5 months spent on this project, writing 4-5 times per week, 1-3 pages per session.

I’m no language expert or student of linguistics but I feel like transcribing a book in a foreign language has really improved my Italian. For starters, you can only really read and remember a few words at a time before writing them down. This makes it much easier to figure out what I was reading. Whereas, if I tried to read the book (and not copy it), I would naturally try to read it at the same pace as English and end up not understanding what I’m reading because my brain can’t process it at that faster rate. I’m also “speaking” the words in my head as I write them, which also engages a different part of the brain than just reading the words or writing them on paper.

When encountering unfamiliar words, I had heard and read that it is better to guess at the meaning than it is to bust out a dictionary to understand every single word. Every now and then, an unknown word or two would be so critical that I couldn’t figure out the gist without looking it up. Not gonna lie, Google Translate’s camera feature came in clutch a few times. But for the most part, I was able to follow along and understand the story even though I didn’t know every word. In the end, I would say I understood 75% or more of the text, which I think is pretty good, even if it is a book geared towards 5th graders!

*Screenshot of the book (left side) and Google Translate (with Google Lens) in action on the right.*

I still have another 20 or so pages left in this notebook AND the Leonardo Momento Magico is still inked up, so I’m excited to pick up another Valentina book and keep on reading, writing, and learning!

*Next up, “Gli Amici di Valentina” (Valentina’s Friends)!*

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Posted on December 13, 2024 by Kimberly Lau and filed under Writing, Fountain Pens.

Lessons Learned from The Little Prince

I recently finished copying Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince. It took me several years to do it, mostly because I didn’t work on it regularly. Don’t worry, this won’t be a book report about The Little Prince, but rather what I learned along the way.

The right book matters - I originally started copying an Italian translation of The Little Prince (“TLP”), but my Italian wasn’t very good back then (I am closer to intermediate these days), so it was pretty discouraging to write something I didn’t understand. It was so much better once I decided to give it up and switch to an English version instead.

What also improved the experience was that it wasn’t anything like the other book copying project I had started prior to TLP. Some of you may know that I’ve been copying Meditations by Marcus Aurelius in a typewriter font. I started Meditations in late May of 2020 and by the time August came around, doing primarily Meditations was kinda driving me nuts. Meditations is a difficult book to read and follow, and writing it in typewriter requires me to focus and slow down a lot, so it is fairly brain-intensive. TLP, on the other hand, is a very easy read and writing in my cursive at mostly regular speed was quite relaxing.

In addition, TLP is a good length for copying. For reading, it is a short book. But for copying, it’s long enough that it takes some time and effort to finish, but not so long that it ever felt laborious. I liked that the chapters were fairly short too, but I stopped whenever I finished one or a few pages, regardless of whether the chapter was done. If you’re thinking about starting a project like this, I’d suggest something short, like the lyrics from your favorite album, or a short children’s book, instead of Lord of the Rings or War & Peace, lol.

Related to this is that having the variety was good for me. I’m sure I could have made a lot more progress on Meditations if that was the only thing I worked on. But I’m also fairly certain that I would have given up on it too. Having several projects makes it more fun for my squirrel brain because I can work on whatever suits my mood that day.

The right notebook matters - When I started TLP, I was using the Hippo Noto A5 “slim” and I quickly discovered that I disliked it. No, I take that back, I HATED it because I realized that I really didn’t like super thick notebooks, and the Hippo Noto is 500 pages thick!! The A5 slim size meant that my hand was constantly “falling off the page” because it took half a sentence to get to the end of a line, and then the edge of the notebook would be digging into my hand. Ditto for writing on the bottom ⅓ of the notebook, which also got messier because my hand is falling off the edge. I got through 36 pages before I gave up. This is not to disparage this particular notebook, just that I realized that this size/format is not for me. Discovering what doesn’t work for you is just as valuable as finding something that does.

*Example of “not right for me” notebook.*

Side note: I shelved this notebook for ages wondering what I would do with a notebook that had 464 pages left. Ever since I decided to just use it as scratch paper, I’ve been going through it so quickly! I use it when inking up a pen to make sure it’s writing, I occasionally make word art, or figure out the order of my next Currently Inked spread. I’m sure some folks feel that it is sacrilege to use old 68 gsm Tomoe River this way, but I’m much happier using instead of having it sit on my shelf, taking up space.

*I am getting much more use out of this notebook now!*

Size matters. Once I gave up on the A5 slim, I decided to use something I hadn’t used before: a B6 notebook from Galen Leather. B6 is not as common as the smaller A6 (like Hobonichi), or the larger A5 (which is the size of most of the “regular” notebooks/journals like Leuchtturm, Rhodia, etc.). It’s a really nice size because it’s neither too big nor too small. It was easy to make progress and finish a page without expending a lot of effort. While B6 was perfect for this project, I don’t think there is a perfect size that fits all projects, so it’s always good to experiment. But if you’re not ready to randomly pick a size, you can try different loose leaf papers to see what size you might want to work on for your project.

Dot? Lined? Gasp….BLANK??? - Picking the Galen notebook also meant that I was going to use a blank notebook. I usually go for dot grid (for bullet journaling), or French or Seyes-ruled (for handwriting practice), so blank was uncharted territory for me. I knew that I couldn’t write straight naturally, so I printed a free guidesheet from The Well-Appointed Desk.

*I printed this on letter size paper and trimmed it to fit the notebook.*

I have since made guideshets in different sizes and line spacings for various projects. I’m now using an A4 one to use with the Yamamoto Paper Pack for writing letters. If it wasn’t for this project, I don’t know that I’d be touching my blank paper stash very much, so yay!

Some Tips/Tricks/Hacks

Washi tape for the win! - After printing my guidesheet, I covered the backside with washi tape, which adds a nice little cushion and also keeps the guidesheet from moving around underneath. The washi tape isn’t sticking to the page below, but the texture from the tape keeps the sheet in place.

*Pro tip: use washi that has uniform thickness so your guide sheet isn’t bumpy. I used washi that came in a set, so it was also color-coordinated!*

E-Books are worth it - Aside from not needing to prop open a physical book, using an eReader (Kindle app, in my case) means you can (1) see how far along you are, either by percentage or by page, (2) change the font, and more importantly (3) change the size of your font! With Meditations, I can only read a couple of words before I write them out because it takes so long to write them, so I use a much larger font so I don’t lose my place. Since I’m writing a lot faster with TLP, I can read more words before writing. I use a smaller font so I can also see where the line breaks are. Pro tip: If it’s not an in-demand book, you might be able to borrow it from your local library via the Libby app (or other similar apps).

Print out pictures - I can’t draw but I really wanted the illustrations from the book, so I used the Kindle Reader on my computer and pasted images into Word, resized them, and then printed them out on label/sticker paper.

*I can’t even draw this - Printer to the rescue!*

Single sheet paper cutter, the tool I never knew I needed - There were a few instances where I messed up. Like royally. Like when I was writing on every other line and was like wait, what am I doing?!? Or when two pages stuck together and then I had a blank page in between. Enter the single sheet paper cutter! Thanks to Pen Addict Slackers for recommending this Olfa Top Sheet Cutter!! In the past, I would have either ripped it out, or use scissors to cut it out, but this cutter’s blade barely sticks out, cutting just one sheet! I used it like any other straight blade and held it against a ruler so it wasn’t crooked.

Let it go! - Channeling my inner Elsa when mistakes happen, which they are bound to do. You can do one of two things: (1) Ignore it and keep writing, which personally drives me nuts, or (2) strike a line through it and keep going. The messier you make the cross out, the more noticeable it is. I look at it as a metaphor for life: mistakes happen, the more you futz with it, the more you see it and the more annoying it gets. But if you can cross it out, you have addressed that (1) yep, you made a mistake, (2) you’ve dealt with it, and (3) you’re moving on. But if ignoring the wrong word or misspelling works for you, then do that! Either way, it’s fine and you can Let It Go!!!

*Take a closer look and you’ll see a simple cross out that you might not have even noticed.*

Along the same lines, it would drive me nuts to start a new page only to discover the chapter was over in a line or two. Decided to just go with it and use the same pen for the next page too - that was kind of freeing. Ditto with what I did in the picture below.

*I turned the page and there were just 2 words left in the chapter so I started the chapter in the middle of the page and it turned out just fine!*

Random thoughts I wrote in cursive for most of it (with the occasional “italic”) and I really like the consistent look of the finished product. I plan to switch it up with different styles for the next project.

Writing has always been meditative and relaxing, and this project was no different. It started during an especially stressful time, with the pandemic, lockdown and virtual schooling, all while living in an apartment while the house was being remodeled. I’m so glad this activity helped me de-stress and relax.

I have finished notebooks before, after all I’m on my 10th A5 notebook for bullet journaling and have kept diaries many years ago, but finishing this project was different. There’s something about starting something and working on it until it was done. As a chronic project-started but not chronic project-finisher, I was really proud of myself for finishing this and am even more motivated to finish my other projects.

I recently saw Yunus Prens (of Galen Leather) and showed him my completed notebook. Galen Leather has been tagged in every IG post that I’ve made for this project and he was so happy and proud to finally see this notebook in person! It made me feel pretty happy and proud too! You may not get this opportunity, but be proud and share your completed work - it’s a big deal and you deserve to show it off!

One of the highlights from the Atlas Sidewalk Sale was showing Meltem (Yunus’ fiancée and Galen Leather’s nib grinder) this page where I used her cursive italic grind on the Kaweco Sport. She was so happy to see the writing in person!

Now that I’ve finished writing The Little Prince, what’s next? I’ve already started writing out an Italian kids book (meant for 8+ year olds, lol), which I view as a different kind of project because this is more about learning the language and I’m already understanding more words without looking them up.

More Mediations, which I’m happy to report is 52% done! This project is definitely going to take a long time before it gets done, but this continues to be a meditative part of my day, and knowing that I’m past the halfway point is very motivating.

Hamilton - I keep telling myself I’m not gonna throw away my shot but my motivation has waned significantly on this one because writing out each character’s names a bajillion times per song is so not appealing. But, having finished TLP, I’m more motivated to keep working on it! Maybe I’ll even finish before Meditations!

As soon as I make more progress on Hamilton, I will be picking another book in English to copy and plan to use different styles instead of just cursive throughout.

Here’s a little IG reel of the completed project. Hope you enjoyed the posts and my journey - thanks for following along!

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Posted on September 20, 2024 by Kimberly Lau and filed under Writing.

Metamorphosis of a Book

(Sarah Read is an author, editor, yarn artist, and pen/paper/ink addict. You can find more about her at her website and on Twitter. And her latest book, The Atropine Tree, is now available!)

My new book, The Atropine Tree came out on Tuesday and I am very excited about it because this book is extra special. One of the reasons this one is so special is because you, pen fam, were right there with me all along the way.

Let's think back in time. No, further than that. Even further--books are long and publishing moves slow, okay? Go back to this post in December of 2017, when I had just finished my first NaNoWriMo post for the PenAddict blog. I discuss my use of the Graphilo planning notebook and the Barnes & Noble Italian Leather drafting notebook there--both excellent choices that have stood up to years of revisions and edits. But that project has now molted several times, shed its old skin, and assumed its final form--an actual book that is now released into the world.

If you look at any of my writing posts from the past six or seven years, you'll often see that Graphilo notebook in my stack. It's where I recorded all my editing notes. I first reviewed it in October of 2017, right before NaNoWriMo started. Between those posts, in November, I wrote The Atropine Tree. Well, most of it. It's not 50,000 words, it's almost 90,000 words. I needed more words to fit all the ghosts in.

The first draft was longer than the B&N notebook, so some extra chapters ended up in the planning notebook, which was fine. I filled all 381 pages of that notebook.

Then I typed up the draft, which came to 286 typed pages. A lot more got added in edits. I tend to draft very economically, and my later drafts always end up much longer than the originals. And in this case, I added another 10k words and a whole side-plot AFTER the novel had been accepted for publication.

I signed a publishing contract for this book on March 3, 2023. The process of editing, waiting for cover art, layout, etc. took over a year--which is actually faster than average.

Just last week, I got to hold the finished book in my hands for the first time. That's always a magical moment. I can reflect back on how I spent a good part of 2017 reading about poisons and jotting notes in my planning notebook, then that wild month of quickly drafting, then more writing, then some more, then years of edits and waiting and submitting and waiting, then acceptance, then waiting.

Basically, there's a lot of waiting involved. Even more waiting than writing. But it's all worth waiting for. And I hope you enjoy the new book! Thanks for keeping me company on the journey. You are all excellent writing companions. Which is good, because I have two more books I need to finish writing this year. So let's ink up some pens, shall we?