Reconnecting with my Scribo Feel A Riveder Le Stelle

I like to revisit my goals throughout the year to check on my progress, and this is true of my stationery intentions. My #1 stationery intention for 2024 was:

Spend time with my collection. I bought some great pens in late 2023, and I want to write with them and really get to know them. I also want to revisit a few pens from previous years to see if they should stay or go.

As you probably know by now, I have a relatively small collection which stayed at between 15-20 pens for the last three years. Most of the pens I own are either constantly in use, or come in and out of rotation frequently. If a pen just sits, I eventually move it on. But there is one pen that I’ve kept without using much, or at all, for almost three years now - the Scribo Feel A Riveder Le Stelle. At various points since March 2021, I said that I should sell it; yet I did not. There is no other pen in the Gathering which I wanted as much, which has meant as much, which caused me this much trouble. Kind of like my writing career, but more on this below.

Scribo Feel A Riveder Le Stelle on top of my journal, in front of some of my books. With Menagerie friends the bats :)

This was my first grail.

For years, I wanted to be nominated for the Nebula Award for the second time. My first Nebula nomination was entirely unexpected and a thing of great joy; all I wanted was to feel that again. And then it came, in 2021, for my pandemic debut novella The Four Profound Weaves, and it felt amazing. Kind family members (hi Éva!) helped me buy a commemorative pen. It’s a lyrical, evocative pen named after a line of poetry about emerging from hell and seeing the stars, and that seemed especially appropriate as a match with my work. The pen made me feel deeply. I was at turns enchanted, awed, frustrated, desperate, regretful. It was a grail and I just wanted it to work as advertised. It didn’t.

Scribo ARLS - uncapped.

Over the next few months, I sent the pen back to Italy for a barrel exchange and a piston tuning. They also tweaked the nib. When the pen returned, the barrel was fixed, but the facets did not quite align (I knew this would happen when I authorized the barrel exchange). The piston was still tight. The nib no longer made a clicking sound, but now it felt different than before, and was less pleasant to write with. I sent the pen off for some nib work, to be adjusted by someone I trust. After that, it wrote great, but the piston got tighter and tighter. A year later, I sent the pen to a repair person who told me there was some defect with the piston itself. That was fixed. At some point of this journey, the nib acquired a pencil-like feedback I disliked — feedback which wasn’t there in the beginning. (I am not naming anyone here because this pen has been through a lot, and don’t think it’s anyone’s fault. These things happen).

In 2023, I bought two Piumas. One because I could not pass the incredible deal - and it’s an amazing pen. Another because after the success of the first Piuma, I wanted a specific Piuma I‘ve been eyeing. I had to send that second Piuma back for an exchange because the nib I received was misaligned. The exchanged Piuma writes very well.

I was rediscovering my love for Scribos. I don’t know if it’s a good thing.

My love for Scribo is always conditional. I love them beyond reason. I think their QC is not amazing. I think there is something magical about the brand. [from conversations with pen friends].

Having years more experience now, looking back, I should have done things completely differently with the A Riveder Le Stelle. Right from the get-go, I should have asked for a complete exchange, seeing as the pen had three issues (barrel, nib, piston) and I bought it new. Since I did not particularly care for the M Flex at that point, I should have exchanged it for an F Flex or an F 18k, and asked for pictures of available barrels in advance. This pen taught me a lot of lessons. I was exhausted. I put the pen away. Every year, I thought I would sell it, but I never did.

Scribo family portrait :))

I own three Scribos. That's more than any other brand on my collection. For some reason I'm a sucker for his brand even though nothing is ever perfect. Of all the pens I own, the ARLS gave me by far the most trouble. I am just irrational about selling it. [from conversations with pen friends]

I journaled a lot about this pen.

This pen represents my writing career. Big, unwieldy, a really cool evocative special edition, weird shape, facets do not align, it’s full of stars and feels amazing in the hand, wrong nib/piston/size/everything. Sold out, an object of desire, but at close look - hey maybe not this particular one? Kept trying to make it work. Exhausted. Can’t part with it. Sunk cost fallacy? [from my personal journal, and also conversations with pen friends]

I have more readers now than I did when I started the blog, and posting personally raw things no longer feels all that great, but maybe this will be worth it to someone. Some special objects represent the big things in life. Love, heartbreak, home, triumph. If these objects break, or do not work as they should, it can be painful. Losing one’s wedding ring or breaking grandma’s special saucer can feel monumental, beyond the immediate logical impact of such an event. It’s magical thinking, but our lives are full of it.

Scibo M Flex nib beauty shot

Over the years, I put a lot of soul into my creative writing. I’ve been critically acclaimed, but never had a big contract, or even a big award, despite many shortlists and accolades over the years. My writing has been tremendously meaningful to a small group of people. I know I changed lives, but I also never had much of a reach. Perhaps that’s a regular pattern of a multiply marginalized queer author. I reached a point of exhaustion. I tried to quit. I have not quit. I’m here among you writing about fountain pens, but I doubt that Big Pen Opportunities are coming my way — I’ll be forever writing about how the sound of the nib on paper reminds me of shadows cast by magical libraries, when many readers are simply looking for barrel measurements.

How many of you are still following me on this journey?

Journaling about the pen. Again.

In 2024, I decided to reink the A Riveder Le Stelle and give it another go. And if not, I would sell it.

In the semidarkness, the boats were older than Romiy remembered them – gnawed by time and by moss, small white conch-shells growing in the gaps of the porous wood. The shells were slender, elongated, and curving like tiny spiraling domes, and Romiy’s hand stole to touch one as if it was the magical spindle to prick them and send them to sleep right here on the pier. [from my current fiction WIP]

Scribo Feel A Riveder Le Stelle on top of my books.

The piston turns well. The pen fills. Having three different Scribo nibs now (EF 18k, F18k, and M 14k) I am no longer worried that the wet M 14k nib is not the One True Nib. Sure, I probably would have been happier with an F Flex, but the M Flex is a nib that’s unique to the gathering, and it’s really distinctive. I still have so many feelings about this pen. And yes, I’m very much writing with it again.

Additionally, Putin’s regime targeted the LGBTQIA+ community through increasingly severe legislation that expanded the propaganda law (December 2022), banned gender transition (July 2023) and declared the international LGBTQIA+ community an extremist organization (November 2023). This directly affected language in use – from the frequency of forms in use, to the possibility of using such forms openly without fear of legal retribution. [from my current academic WIP].

I figured out something weird, too: if I put on noise-cancelling headphones, the pencil-like sound goes away, and I’m left with a bouncy, distinctively soft feeling of the nib as it’s pressed to the paper; a sense of bewildered delight. The nib can probably be adjusted slightly to help me deal with the sound without headphones - which means that my path to improving this pen is not over.

I saw a meme the other day, it went like this:

It was perhaps relatable, but it just made me sad. I have a lot of purpose in my life, but I’m also struggling with my health and with burnout. Purpose comes from desire. The nature of desire is elusive. Depression and trauma and loss all muffle desire until we are left alone in an empty field of rain. I learned lately to hold on to my own desire. One cannot endlessly draw from the well and expect it to always renew. We have to nurture ourselves. Even if we’re not as advertised or slightly off-kilter or in need of a nib tune, we can still hope to see the stars again.