Tūl Pens, my one true love

The pen that captured my heart.

“Am I writing well? Thank my pen. Am I writing badly? […B]lame my pen.”
― Anne Fadiman, Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

I have always had a love affair with the written word, and not just the words to write them but the tools used to write them: the paper and the pen. Over time, I’ve discovered that while the paper matters, what matters most to me is my pen. I’ve learned that I prefer to use one for everything, keeping my life less complicated and overwhelming. The pen that has captured my heart and hand is the Tūl GL Series Retractable gel pen with black ink, black barrel with gold accents, and medium point of 0.7 mm.

“Oh, how I love [them], let me count the ways.” I love them because they are so pretty! Black and gold together is one of my favorite color combinations. I love how they come with the little ball on the end to prevent the ink from evaporating. This is called a follower and it’s made from a type of silicone grease which is used to stop evaporation. I love how the pen rests comfortably between my fingers; its barrel width is perfect for the size of my hand. I love how the ink flows substantially out of the pen when writing. I love how the point’s width and heft gives my writing a feeling of prominence and a sense of meaning. I love watching the words dry on the page just a slight moment after writing them.

I don’t know when my love of stationery developed. My grandma has a cassette tape of my 3-year-old sister and 6-year-old me playing nurse on her. I can be heard taking notes (I liked to pretend that I was writing in cursive before I learned, so my notes amounted to a lot of squiggles on the page), shuffling papers around and at one point yelling at my sister to “get off my papers.” As I got older, the particular paper and the pen became important. And I have always been on the hunt for the best.

In elementary school, I fell in love with Lisa Frank stationary. Remember the colorful graphics and all the different colors of notebook paper including hot pink, teal, purple, and blue? My pen of choice was Papermate’s erasable. I’m a lefty that writes like a right-handed person; what I mean is I don’t write with the uncomfortable-looking crook, and so for a long time I left smudges all over my paper and the erasable ink helped me clear them away. Eventually, I figured out how to write without smudging, although when I am not paying attention, it can slip back.

My paper needs have and still change depending on what I’m writing. Besides the right texture vs. smoothness ratio, I prefer my journal paper to be pretty thin, even flimsy, expressing the fleetingness of the thought of the moment. I also enjoy seeing that I have written, existed, on the other side of the page, so bleed-through doesn’t matter to me as much as it does other people. My journals have to lay flat, and it doesn’t matter if they are soft or hard cover. I still like to send old-fashioned cards and letters through the mail and I prefer this paper to be a bit more sturdy, expressing the concreteness of my feelings for the person receiving my correspondence. But my pen remains the Tūl.

Tūl has come out with additional barrel and ink colors and ballpoint pens too, but I prefer the gel in black and gold! For a while, I thought they were limited editions because I couldn’t find them anywhere. So I went on the hunt for another pen, while keeping a few unused Tūls in my drawer for emergencies.

I commenced an adulterous affair with the SHARPIE S-Gel pens. I really liked that they dried quickly, reducing the chance of smears. I even thought I liked that the SHARPIE S-Gels had a finer point. Then one morning while writing in my journal, the S-Gel ran out of ink (which they annoyingly do rather quickly) and in a fit of rage, I grabbed one of my emergency Tūls and realized the errors of my ways. Fortunately, on a shopping trip to an office supply store, I saw that my Tūls were available again and joyously returned to my one true love.

This is also the pen that I took to the first ever Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club Retreat. And when I asked Anne and guest author Ariel Lawhon to sign copies of their most recent books, they both used my Tūl and wanted to know who made it and commented on how great it was. I couldn’t agree more.

Do you have a favorite pen? Please share in the comments.

P.S. School supplies for grown-ups and Book journaling tools