I had hoped to be blogging rather more regularly by now. Unfortunately we’re still not properly settled in Aberdeen, and currently working with intermittent access to the internet. I’m busy with the new job and various writing projects, trying to squeeze the words in between work, food and sleep. My hypergraphia, which trundles along for most of the year but usually goes for broke in November/December, was a month late this year, and I’ve been frantically scribbling things I can’t use since just before Christmas. It does get in the way.

Both Frood and I will be attending Hi-Ex in Inverness at the end of March, seeing as how it’s practically just up the road. If any fellow writers/artists/comic fans/circumstantial-cyclists want to say hi, he’s the one with the beard and I’m the one with the black right eye and the Pictish tattoo. We’d love to meet you.

I was sorting through some of the photos I’ve been taking recently using the HTC and I decided, on a whim, to take a picture of my desk here at home. It’s fairly representative of me as a person, I think. Here you can see a souvenir of my triathlon days, the Lara Croft figurine, two different incarnations of Wolverine (sad Marvel Fan Girl that I am), the pile of moleskines, the ink, the pens, the English language reference texts. There’s a sonic screwdriver, next to which a couple of interesting rocks sit ready to be used as paperweights. The pink post-it note on the wall is a reminder of a major alteration I need to do to a story I’m working on: I can’t get around to doing it until the latest round of hypergraphia has eased off and I’m not at all sure when that will happen, or whether, when it does, I’ll have time to do as much of the rewrite as I need to before it flares again. The image on the computer screen is a picture of my desk, in which the monitor is showing a picture of my desk.

Here’s me: desperate to be tidy with a tendency towards kipple, inside and out. Easily bored, easily distracted, easily amused. Obsessive, compulsive, impulsive, inquisitive, frequently argumentative and almost always recursive.

Because hypergraphia is a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder, the way it manifests can also be subject to a kind of obsessive-compulsion. In my particular case, one of the ways it manifests is that I’m hugely particular about the tools I use, and every so often those tools are subject to change.

Sometimes it’s deliberate. Hypergraphia doesn’t mean not ever suffering from writer’s block. What it means is that when writer’s block strikes it has side-effects. I learned a long time ago that there are ways to break it. I had to. Writer’s block feels like an infected wound, swelling and throbbing. The only thing that helps is to lance and drain it, and that means finding a way to get the words out of my head. I will change pens, change ink, change paper. If it’s severe I sometimes resort to pencil on loose pages, because somehow the impermanence of it makes it easier to translate the pressure into letters.

It hasn’t been that bad in a long time now, mostly because I’ve found that the combination of moleskine and Bic Cristal Grip biro with a back-up of the faithful old narrow-ruled, feint and margin keeps things flowing nicely enough. The only things I ever start on the computer are blog entries, and even those occasionally begin life as ink on paper.

Still, occasionally the urge comes to change tools, and just recently I found myself obsessing over fountain pens. I’ve always owned fountain pens. I’ve had a collection of coloured inks on my desk for years, from the days when Parker had a brief foray into the more esoteric end of the stationery market and produced a number of beautiful coloured inks in wide-based bottles that resembled ship’s decanters. I have one of each. The emerald is particularly nice, and I also like the ruby. As far as I know these inks are no longer available, and I feel a little sad about that, as I’ve often broken a threatening writer’s block by switching to one of those colours.

Not the sapphire, though. I never got on with the sapphire. There’s something wrong about blue ink, and I can only imagine there is a point where the synaesthesia and the hypergraphia square up to one another on the battlefield and agree to mutual tolerance as long as we don’t go there.

I got it into my head that what I wanted was a good pen. I have a collection of Parker Vectors, and the stainless steel model was what I considered to be my “good pen”. But I have small hands with thumbs that don’t oppose properly, and heavy or thick pens don’t sit comfortably in my grip. I like a light pen with an ultra-fine nib that produces a well-behaved line with no feathering. In the past the only pens I’ve found that will do the job are liquid-ink tech points.

Then I bought a Platinum Carbon, and I’ve been extremely happy with it. So happy, in fact, that I’ve almost run out of the Parker Ebony ink. Unfortunately it is not a pen you can chuck in a bag and forget about, as it is long and slender and has a pointy end. I was still in need of a good quality fountain pen that I could carry around with me.

Rather than taking an expensive gamble on a well-known brand, I followed the recommendation of a fellow cyclist and stationery geek and ordered a couple of Jinhao pens. I also ordered a bottle of Noodler’s Bulletproof ink.

Here, then, is what currently serves to keep my head from exploding in an unnecessary and potentially messy fashion all over the walls, floor and ceiling. Pen, ink and paper. Each is beautiful in its own right, even before it gets as far as contributing to the semiotic sanity-prophylactic that is the written word.

Of course, in looking for a replacement for the Parker Ebony, I discovered an entire new subject on which to turn my obsessive-compulsive tendencies. Ink. I didn’t know it was possible to buy scented varieties. And all those colours! I’m going to need more room on my desk.

As anyone who has been unfortunate enough to spend a significant amount of time in my presence will know, I have some obsessive-compulsive tendencies. Mostly they involve mugs; or, at least, the mugs are the most obvious indication of mild OCD.

There are a whole bunch of traits that are loosely grouped under the label of obsessive-compulsive (henceforth shortened to OC, because I’m lazy). I count things, like steps, and occasionally find myself avoiding cracks in the pavement. My main one, however, is hypergraphia — handy, you’d think, for a writer. It’s not that simple, sadly.

You see, the problem with hypergraphia is that what comes out is what has to come out. It’s not necessarily marketable, or even good. Often it’s not something I have any particular desire to show anyone. More often than not the hypergraphia gets in the way of writing rather than contributing to it. Hence my failure to complete NaNoWriMo for the past three years. It’s all well and good having a declared project, but when you sit down to write your 1700 – 2000 words for the day and what comes out is 2 – 3000 words of material that has nothing to do with the project, and you haven’t figured out how to change tracks, you’re not going to get very far.

Another way I get OC about writing is in the materials. Everything I do starts as ink on paper. I can’t begin anything on the computer. The paper has to be narrow ruled. I can just about cope without the margin, although I get really grumpy if it’s not feint. Pens, too, are important. I have a desk tidy that is full of nothing but unused Bic Cristal Grip biros. Once the cap comes off and ballpoint touches paper, then the pen has to live in the other desk tidy.

I keep my writing separated into categories. The mandatory words, the ones that I have to put onto paper or else my head will explode, live in black moleskine journals. Hard-backed, large. Moleskine journals are narrow ruled, have great quality paper and are robust enough to stand up to travelling around everywhere with me. I get through about three a year. I also have a red one, which I keep for story ideas and writing down scenes or sequences when I’m away from my desk or am sneaking in something constructive when the hypergraphia isn’t looking.

Recently I became entirely enamoured of the idea of returning to fountain pens. I always used to write with a fountain pen, but as my writing grew smaller and more compact I needed a narrower, more reliable line. Also, fountain pen ink has a tendency to run, which is an important consideration for inclement weather, even though I do wrap my books in plastic bags for transport.

I asked the good folks at CycleChat, which turns out to be a veritable sanctuary for the pen-obsessed, and ended up at CultPens. I will need to visit a shop where I can try the pens before investing in something expensive, but at CultPens I found the Platinum Carbon.

The line is beautifully narrow — narrow enough that my parker mocha ink doesn’t show up very well on the off-white moleskine paper — as well as smooth and reliable. The pen is light and nicely balanced, and while I’ve used pens with smoother nibs, I’ve not used one that produces such a crisp line.

If you have a compulsion, you might as well make it as pleasant as possible.