I've had some luck by scribbling on the first page of every new notebook. Subconsciously it is now "ruined" and safe for every day use.

Your meeting notes don't have to be scribbles. Learn to take quick and accurate notes while listening and talking, and they become an enormously valuable reference.

I'm not being purely metaphorical in this use of "valuable", either. Last year this skill made me about twenty-four thousand dollars.

> Last year this skill made me about twenty-four thousand dollars.

Could you please elaborate?

No, but I'm sure you can think of any number of situations in which it's of material benefit to have the best memory in the conversation. Taking good notes means not having to rely for specifics on the squishy stuff between your ears.

I dedicate the very last page of all my work notebooks - Mnemosyne N195As, so very nice indeed - entirely to doodles and scribbles, both because with fountain pens sometimes you need a sheet like that, and because sometimes a person needs a sheet like that.

Why only a single page? Every other page in my notebooks is dedicated to doodling and cool smeared fountain pein inkdrops!

If I'm doodling in a work notebook, that's an indication that I need to either re-engage with the meeting or leave it, and perhaps also have a quiet word afterward to whoever was ostensibly running it. (Or I'm testing a freshly reinked or swabbed pen.)

If your fountain pen blots, you may want to consider a different ink. Western pens have larger nibs and feeds than Japanese, so tend to be very wet when filled with thinner Japanese inks. Contrapositively, Western inks tend to flow poorly in Japanese pens, especially those with smaller nib sizes. A shame; I miss my J. Herbin violet.

It could also be due to rough handling, and probably is if you tend often to find ink on the inside of the cap and the outside of the section, and thence of course on your fingers.

You might also write with too heavy a hand, which tends to splay the tines of the nib; this is especially likely if you tend to see lines that don't properly fill with ink, since too wide a space between the tines will fail to sustain the capillary action that draws ink smoothly from the feed to the tip, and will also make dripping more likely since the flow of ink from the feed is no longer properly controlled. Gold nibs are especially vulnerable here; if you're new to fountain pens, consider switching for a while to a steel nib, which will feel somewhat rougher but write just as well and be much more forgiving of mistakes as you learn how correctly to use this type of tool.

If none of these apply, then perhaps the pen just needs to be flushed and cleaned, which is something worth doing with a fountain pen after every few fills at most, or between different inks and especially different brands. This merits concern not just for color mixing reasons, but also because some inks when mixed exhibit chemical behaviors that can lead to clogging. And just generally, a well-maintained pen will write much more neatly and reliably than one that hasn't been looked after in a while.

I use notebooks for thinking at work but I've noticed I'm only ever really making progress when talking to a colleague. Now that helps untangle thoughts and get from ideas into an actionable plan. Even the notebook doesn't really help me with that.

Try thinking of the notebook as the other side of a conversation you have with yourself.

Oh so im not the only one? Some I love so much Im still waiting on the right occasion to use.