I know. I said I would never again stray from my favorite notebook for journaling. I literally said
Now that Top Flight WIRED paper has set my standard so high, I’m done experimenting with other spiral notebooks; I don’t want to waste money trying more notebooks that are bound (haha) to be disappointingly substandard relative to the WIRED notebooks ….
But then I filled up my last WIRED notebook during a family emergency stint away from home, and I needed to keep journaling in something … ANYTHING. So I went to our favorite drugstore (the Bartell’s next to the Seattle Public Library’s gorgeous flagship downtown branch). And the color of this notebook was so pretty and soothing to me — easter-egg bright light spring blue, such a nice bridge between winter and spring — that I decided to go ahead and give this Oxford brand of notebook a chance.
Never again, you guys! I do love the aesthetic of this notebook from the color to even the flimsy crinkly-lightness of the thin paper, to the inner pockets that come with this three-subject version: thin and grey but with a texture that gives them a silver-y appearance. There’s something futuristically minimal about the whole thing, like it might dissolve like a miniature spaceship made of plastic cotton candy infused with just a tiny bit of metal. BUT the paper is just no good for writing fast with my fountain pens. And that’s what I need it to do: LET MY THOUGHTS DUMP OUT WITH EASY SPEED. It’s my journal: for stream-of-consciousness, for rants, for furious brainstorming, etc. Everything needs to FLOW out of me, with ZERO resistance. And preferably with tactile PLEASURE. This paper just doesn’t cut it.
I tried a lot of different inks & fountain pens (some with broad nibs even!), but this paper is sub-par.
I tested half a dozen pens and inks right away — the same pens with the same inks that had been giving me great pleasure to use for journaling in my Top Flight WIRED notebook and in my planner — and none of them felt (or looked) as good. 🙁
A couple of pens and inks work OKAY (the best most slippery inks: Noodler’s Polar Black ink in a Platinum Preppy with a medium nib, and Diamine’s Majestic Blue in my nicest pen: a Parker Sonnet), but the rest of them are scratchy and chalky-feeling. The same pens and inks that had been giving me great pleasure before, like the Visconti Turquoise in my broad-nibbed Blueberry Kaweco Frosted Sport, are reticent to come out and meet the page with the kind of wet eager willingness I desire.
“Premium paper”?!? This is like sheets being described as “premium” without any specific thread count: don’t buy it!
TOPS Products says this paper is “premium”, but what does that even mean? I am not big on measurements and quantifying quality, but for some things numbers are actually important. Top Flight WIRED notebooks are made with “heavyweight 20lb paper”. That is a feature that can objectively be measured and verified, like sheets with a high thread count: IT MEANS A LOT. If they don’t advertise the thread count, chances are the sheets are not high-quality, will not wash or wear well, and will not feel good.
I don’t want to be a paper snob (and I am *not* one — I *love* being able to buy my notebooks in accessible places like supermarkets and drugstores, plus a lot of fancy paper is finished in ways that just SUCK for journaling or any kind of speed-writing) but I do want paper that gives me pleasure and doesn’t slow me down. Oxford notebook paper is not it.
Here’s the question: should I give up on this notebook right away and replace it with something better? Or do I stick with it through alllllll one hundred fifty pages?
