Posts filed under Travel

Stationery Outdoors

(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 check out her latest book, Out of Water, now available where books are sold!)

I tend to overthink what stationery I bring when I travel, but it's something I enjoy thinking about. My final adventure of the summer took place this past weekend--my first camping trip! A friend and I went tent camping for three days on the shores of Lake Superior, hiking the lakeshore and north woods all day and cooking over a fire. It was amazing! But what stationery do you bring to the great outdoors?

My carry needed to be pretty minimal. There are already way too many things to pack for a camping trip, and priority space was given to gear that would prevent freezing or starving. It would also need to be stationery that could handle some potentially rough conditions.

Pens were the easiest to choose. My Spoke Roady, which goes with me everywhere, was a given as my practical pen. For a fountain pen, I chose the Gravitas Quark, which I'm currently test-driving for review. Both fit nicely in the wee Galen Leather zip case, which I'm also testing out. And, because I brought my Plotter Mini 5, the Kaweco Liliput that lives in the pen loop also came along. I had two spare small international ink cartridges in my toiletries bag, just in case of an inspiration emergency (both the ink that was already in the Kaweco, so no wilderness pen cleaning would be required).

Paper was trickier. I had a bit of paper in my Plotter, yes, but I don't find that size good for creative writing, just for jotting notes. It was possible that I'd have quite a bit of down time, so I wanted to be prepared to work on one of my writing projects. I have three short stories, two novellas, and one novel in progress. And I'll admit, my notebook situation is a bit out of control at the moment. Normally I have one notebook that all my short fiction goes into, but juggling multiple deadlines, plus the fact that my main short story notebook only has a few pages left (so I had to start a new one for a new story), means that I actually have four story notebooks in progress, plus two for the novel. I figured I'd work on a short story this trip, but the one that's due the soonest is in progress in a very fancy/fussy notebook with Cosmo Air Light paper. CAL paper doesn't like it if you breathe on it wrong. I love it, but I wouldn't consider it outdoorsy. But I remembered I had a small Paperblanks notebook that I'd taken on a previous trip. I'd started a novella in that notebook that I've since set aside. I decided that it was small enough, but substantial enough, and also durable enough, to be my trip notebook for the woods.

So how did my choices fare on their camping trip? Well. Let's just say I don't think I ever even unzipped that pocket of my backpack. That's right. I didn't touch a single piece of stationery for the entire trip. I didn't write a word. I didn't even so much as sign a receipt. No regrets! I was too busy frolicking.

What I did do: spent a collective 17 hours on three different beaches; hiked several trails; cooked 7 meals over campfires that I started myself; ate lots of s'mores, saw the northern lights (!), and collected a handful of beautiful Lake Superior agates. I'm bruised, sunburned, mosquito-bitten, exhausted, and totally happy. And behind on my writing. Worth it. You've gotta live to have something to write about.

(Note: Some photos are courtesy of my camping buddy, Kat Rohrmeier.)


Enjoy reading The Pen Addict? Then consider becoming a member to receive additional weekly content, giveaways, and discounts in The Pen Addict shop. Plus, you support me and the site directly, for which I am very grateful.

Membership starts at just $5/month, with a discounted annual option available. To find out more about membership click here and join us!

Posted on September 7, 2023 and filed under Travel.

Stationery On the Go, Train Edition

(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 check out her latest book, Out of Water, now available where books are sold!)

On Thursday, June 8th, I drove two hours to Milwaukee, got on a train for two hours to Chicago, got on another train for eleven hours to Pittsburgh, then got on another train to Altoona for three hours. It was a long night. Then I spent the next five days packing up and clearing out my grandmother's house and loading a few treasured items into a shipping container. Then I got back on the Altoona train to Pittsburgh, and spent five days at the Horror Writers Convention, StokerCon. Then I got on the Pittsburgh train to Chicago and the Chicago train to Milwaukee, and then home again. Ten days on the road that included everything from sitting in the mud in a graveyard to attending a formal awards banquet. And throughout that process, I needed to write. A lot. And without carrying too many heavy things, because train hopping is tough, and there would also be times when I needed to walk 1-2 miles with all my gear on my back. This was the most minimal packing I've ever done, and it worked well for me.

I just got back yesterday as I write this, and I'm still lost in the fog of exhaustion, but here's a list of Pen Addict-relevant thoughts and encounters from my trip.

Trains are perfect for writers. The whole travel mode is less frantic and hassled than flying. If your tray table isn't roomy enough, head to the dining car for unlimited coffee and a table to spread your work out. While most of my long train rides were at night, while I tried (unsuccessfully) to sleep, a daytime train ride of eleven hours sounds almost like a writing retreat in itself. Overall, I found this mode of travel to be my favorite over driving or flying.

No matter how much I write, or plan to write, I really just need one notebook and pen. I brought the Pebble Stationery Cosmo Air Light notebook, my Schon DSGN pocket fountain pen, and the CW&T Pen Type-B as my travel stationery, along with my Mini Plotter with the Kaweco Lilliput in the loop. I used the Pebble Stationery and the Schon for story writing, and I used the Pen Type B for signing receipts. I used one sheet of Plotter paper to leave a nice note for my B&B innkeeper. And I used the Plotter itself to press flowers. It works quite well for that. I pressed clover and morning glories from my grandparents' graves, and two roses from my grandmother's garden. An unconventional use case, but one I am very grateful for. The plastic dividers and elastic closure band make it perfect for collecting small, meaningful blooms. And the day after I collected these flowers, I found flowers that my grandmother had pressed in her own books, from her own parents' funerals. We were always very much alike.

Write letters. Lots of letters. Write them to the people you love, and when you receive letters, keep them somewhere where your granddaughter will find them someday and see how much you loved and were loved. My grandmother saved hundreds of letters that my grandfather sent to her when he was in the Navy. Of all the treasures I found in the house, these were the very best.

When you have to plan a difficult thing, plan a very fun thing for right after. Recovering from an emotional week by surrounding myself with writer friends was the perfect antidote to grief. With readings, and panels, and signings, and talks, and banquets, and bar closings, there's both plenty of time to talk and process, and plenty of distraction. And lots of hugs.

If you go to painstaking measures to pack minimally for a difficult journey, maybe don't acquire 18 new books to carry home. Just some advice for future me.

The best thing you can possibly do before getting on a train for uncountable hours is to chill at a friend's house, especially if that friend has goats. And Smores.

This journey was strange and not linear, much like this post. In two days the pod with my grandmother's things will arrive at my house, and I will literally and metaphorically unpack the artifacts of her life and take these objects soaked in memory into my home. My grandmother gave me my love of reading and writing and sentimentality--all of which are essential ingredients to who I am in general, and are also the things that led me to my love for pens and paper.

I didn't write as much as I needed to on this trip; there wasn't as much downtime as I'd hoped as I moved quickly from task to task. But now that I'm home, it's me and the pages for miles, and I just have to stay on track.


Enjoy reading The Pen Addict? Then consider becoming a member to receive additional weekly content, giveaways, and discounts in The Pen Addict shop. Plus, you support me and the site directly, for which I am very grateful.

Membership starts at just $5/month, with a discounted annual option available. To find out more about membership click here and join us!

Posted on June 22, 2023 and filed under Writing, Travel.

Another Writing Retreat in the Books (Literally)

(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 check out her latest book, Out of Water, now available where books are sold!)

Memorial Day weekend is always my busiest writing time. As a horror writer, everything is scheduled to come out around Halloween, which means everything is due by June. Sometimes I spend the weekend hiding at the lake and writing, and sometimes I spend it at a convention in Madison. This year I attended the convention, though I hid and wrote most of the time.

I usually set myself a minimalistic travel goal. But when you're running on four deadlines, maximalism rules. There was no thoughtful process about which pen to bring. Is it inked? Bring it! Oh, you're writing stories in three different notebooks? Bring them all! And you have to type them and turn them in??? Better bring the computer! I usually travel with a backpack only for any amount of time, but this trip took three bags, and it was only three days. Granted, I had to have a ballgown and heels with me, but still. I also adopted a small cactus on the first day of my trip, which added an interesting daily carry challenge that I did not anticipate.

My clothes and toiletries traveled in my Tom Bihn Tri-Star; my computer, tech, and heels were in the Tom Bihn Swift; and my daily carry, including all writing gear, was the Tom Bihn Parental Unit. The Tri-Star is usually all I need, with the addition of a sling to use as a purse. But the Parental Unit is 99.99% the perfect bag for me. If it had an external grab handle, it would be unbeatable. The internal organization makes my heart sing, and it never fails to amaze me how much I can fit into it while not feeling overburdened. It's the most carried bag I own. For daily use, I just don't zip it, and make use of the inexplicably placed interior grab handles. I need it zipped when I travel, though, so it drove me a little nuts on this trip.

For my most-used writing gear, I defaulted to my Hobonichi Cousin. I'm terrible at using the daily pages for daily things, so I use the unused daily pages as rough draft pages. It works out to be the perfect system for me, as I have the monthly and weekly planner pages that I use all the time, and then the rest is essentially a regular notebook, which I always need to have with me anyway. The pen I reached for most was my Hardy Penwrights that I got at the Chicago Pen Show a few weeks ago. Granted, it was so pretty it distracted me and inspired a whole pen glamour-shot photoshoot for later blog use, and it even distracted some nearby writers who have now been penabled. It happens.

I also spent a good amount of time drafting in my Seven Seas Writer, and for that I used my Sailor 4am that I reviewed last week. Most of the rest of my writing was done on the computer. Alas.

To carry my precious pens safely, I used a Rickshaw Bagworks case I got from Carolina Pen Company--their Unicorn Autopsy design. Inside that I have a three-pen Rickshaw sleeve, a two-pen Rickshaw sleeve, and two single-pen Rickshaw sleeves. I'm a fan.

Get to work!!!

Overall, it was a lot to carry, and I didn't use it all, because I didn't hit all my deadlines. I'm still working on it! I hit the road again in a week, for another author conference. I'm going more minimal this time--though I still need the ballgown and heels. And I'm taking a train halfway across the country, so I'm hoping for some chill writing time. I'm bringing two fountain pens (a Schon DSGN pocket pen and a Kaweco Liliput), two non-fountain pens (a Spoke Roady and a Pen Type-B), and two notebooks (my Hobonichi and the Plotter Mini). That doesn't sound too minimal when I list it all out, but who needs clothes when you can pack stationery? I'll just wear the gown every day.


Enjoy reading The Pen Addict? Then consider becoming a member to receive additional weekly content, giveaways, and discounts in The Pen Addict shop. Plus, you support me and the site directly, for which I am very grateful.

Membership starts at just $5/month, with a discounted annual option available. To find out more about membership click here and join us!

Posted on June 1, 2023 and filed under Writing, Travel.