For day fifteen, I chose a Sheaffer Targa. This is the first "real" fountain pen I owned; in fact, the pen I used is exactly the same pen, bought in 1978. I haven't used it in years, since I moved away from cartridge / converter pens, but I thought it would be interesting to see how it stacks up against all the other pens I've tried since. I filled the squeeze converter with Noodlers Burgundy ink.
The squeeze filler worked without much fuss, pulling in enough ink to last for the entire writing session. Although the Targa's nib is not the smoothest I've ever felt, I was surprised at just how easy it was to use. Of course, I spent years gripping this pen, so a certain amount of familiarity, even after so many years, is probably to be expected. The brushed stainless steel is an attractive, practical finish.
The nib was nice and wet, with good ink flow. Although I would no longer be happy using this pen and no other for days on end, if I were stranded with nothing else to write with, I could go on writing for as long as my supply of ink held out without any real problems. This is a good, basic pen for any writer. There are many different versions out there, to suit a wide range of tastes. If you don't want to use bottled ink, it takes standard Sheaffer cartridges, although disappointment with Skrip inks was another reason I set this pen aside for so long.
Noodlers Burgundy is a nice, attractive colour, and it is a fairly wet ink with good flow that lubricates the nib nicely. It certainly behaves much better in this pen than I remember Skrip doing. For some reason, I found this one of the least suitable colours for writing a manuscript in. That is probably a matter of personal taste, since it is dark enough to read with no trouble. Whatever the reason, although I like it, at least at the moment, I can't think of a single story that would prompt me to choose this as the "right" ink.
As far as using it for markup, I'd want to be sure the ink I was contrasting it with was just right. It is dark enough it wouldn't jump right out against many purples, dark reds, or even black. And yet it is just bright enough to blend in with many brighter reds. It might work well in marking up a manuscript written in blue, or some other colour that would make it stand out.
As I continued to struggle to bring the story back on track, I wrote 1,513 words, for a total so far this month of 32,542 words. Although this is less than my target, my overall average is still better than two thousand words a day, so I'm not in serious trouble yet. I will have my work cut out for me when I begin the typing in process, since I'll have to stitch together the various passages and versions of events, without leaving any loose ends dangling.
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