Blimey, what is it with writers and stationery?. No sooner had we put up author Jill Mansell’s post on her stationery loves, when Jenny Colgan asked us on Twitter if she could let us see her stationery too…..how could we say no?
So Jenny, tells us about your stationery, what’ve you got?
Top Row
1) I collect notebooks wherever I go, so this is a small selection.
2) I draw cartoons for people as slightly disappointing birthday gifts for them. I will buy almost any fine liner on the market- oh my idea of heaven is a great big pen display and twenty minutes- and I like to draw with a Pigma Micron 0.2 but the Stablio are my favourites for inking. The children are terrified of them, because of the look they get when they ask to borrow them :)
3) My bogstandard every day pen. They’re lovely these, good inkflow and I buy them by the dozen. Sometimes TOO good.
4) My Mont Blanc. In France where we live they take écriture extremely seriously. My eight year old has just started using his (compulsory) fountain pen at his school. His handwriting is far lovelier already than mines will ever be.
5) How did we live without Sharpies? Kid’s hats, water bottles, files, just everything. This one also gets used to dot the side of my 5 year old’s middle finger to remind him to hold his pen ‘prawply’.
6) My first job when I finish writing a book is the dreaded red pen edit. I print out the manuscript, then go through it yielding the red pen like a strict schoolteacher, scrubbing stuff, changing stuff, scrawling up the sides and on the back, or worse, just writing it ‘make this better’. I hate doing it and I hate then revising my red pen edit even more, but trust me, in this business if you’re not tough on your own work, everyone else certainly will be. Anyway, if you’re interested, Papermate make the best red pens for vicious red pen edits.
7) Crane & Co. Best stationers in the world in my opinion. In London you get it at Fortnums.
Second row
1) Most of my notebooks have ringbound pages for quick jotting on the move.
2) I buy notebooks as travel mementoes. This one of course is from Helsinki.
3) You may not be able to see here, but all French school jotters are of course squared, not lined. I love the squared ones for doodling and lettering.
4) This bashed up old book is my most treasured piece of stationery: it’s a hand- bound identical replica of the diary the Doctor and River Song share in Doctor Who. Was it stupidly expensive? Yes. Was it worth it? Totally. I only use it for my Doctor Who work; it has pages full of the verbal tics of the different Doctors, and doodles of the TARDIS.
Jenny’s recent books include The Loveliest Chocolate Shop in Paris, Christmas at the Cupcake Cafe, and Dr Who’s Dark Horizons,
