I struggled a lot on deciding a name for this website and a sort of nickname for my career as a content writer (creator, as I prefer but more on this later). Most suggested to simply go with your full name or create a complete new persona, not connected to yourself in any way.

I rejected the latter as I wanted to give a personal image of myself and be immediately honest with the website visitors. I wanted to be “me”, not some entity.

Thus, the name had to be in it. Also for SEO reasons. But just the name felt simple, even shallow. Definitely not original, as most content writers out there use just their full name. And while I do believe the full name had great importance, I wanted to highlight something else of me as well.

And that’s how “The Fountain Pen Creator” came to be.

Why the Fountain Pen reference?

Unsurprisingly, it’s because I love fountain pens. I haven’t a huge collection, just 3 of them, but I’ve always been fascinated by how they write, their construction, their complexity for a task that otherwise seems so straightforward and even a bit out of fashion these days. Fountain pens have a lot of class, a timeless patina over them, can be considered a status symbol, sometimes even an object of great desire.

I love how smoothly they write (at least the good ones…), how durable they look, unlike the cheap biros. I like the idea of buying one that would last me for decades, even all my life. Most fountain pens are made of sturdy materials like steel, wood or various other metals or leagues like gold or carbon fiber. They cost way above simpler ballpoint pens but they come equipped to last. Plus, the sheer versatility! One week you can use a bright blue ink, the next pop in a cartridge with a dark green one and the next yet an ochre-inspired ink. All with the same fountain pen. You don’t get to do the same with any pen.

Plus, writing with a fountain pen is beautiful. Ink flows effortlessly, the hand moves on the paper without having to apply any pressure. Your wrists will thank you, trust me. Writing long papers by hand isn’t an issue with a fountain pen.

I’m not into calligraphy, but people have made awesome use of their newly-bought fountain pens. I wish I could write as beautifully as them.

Sure, there are shortcomings. Refilling is often a process that ends up colouring your fingers as a side effect. Ink is expensive, but not as much as you would believe. The environment will be happy to have fewer mountains of plastic around, by the way. Seriously, the idea of using hundreds of throw-away pens throughout one’s life had to be one of the worst humanity had. Choosing the right fountain pen for your requires some time and testing a few, not all write in the same way. It’s a bit of a nerdy hobby to test and hoard fountain pens, which I understand for many it’s overkill.

But I’m somewhat a nerd myself, and fountain pens are a fairly inexpensive hobby to undertake (unless you end up buying the high end ones…).

For those who are curious, my current main fountain pen is a Faber-Castell Ambition Pear Wood.

Ok, now you know why I used “The Fountain Pen Creator” as a nickname. But why “creator”? Wouldn’t have a simpler “content writer” done as well?

Writing is creativity

Seems obvious, especially for authors of novels and journalists writing long form essays. Copywriting, ghostwriting and “un-creative” writing is seen less as an effort of one’s creativity and much more as churning out words after words, caring only to make the text marketing-ready and SEO-friendly. Some text looks like it was written by a robot indeed and may be totally replaced by AI-writing one day.

Thus, associating creativity with a freelance writer that mostly does copywriting and ghostwriting may seem pretentious. It may well be.

I’ve had plenty of clients who were extremely specific with what they wanted me to write. As a freelance writer it is normal to have that client that gives you 3-4 keywords to optimize the article for, has specific chapters’ requirements and even a few that make you perfectly crafted outlines that make you think why wouldn’t they just write the article themselves. Some should.

It is normal then to not think of ghostwriting/copywriting and content marketing in general as a creative act. Often there’s very little creativity. Some articles get written in a surprising amount of time, actually, which would indicate no creativity was involved.

Yet I believe that even in the most SEO-constrained, marketing-oriented and perfectly outlined content writing job out there, some creativity is needed. Necessary. Surely present.

Content writing isn’t an automatic process. Words just don’t get out one after another, without one thinking. That’s a job that a future AI will be able to accomplish, probably. Writing any content, marketing-optimized or not, requires thinking: before opening your word processor, during it and after it, in the often dreaded phase of editing. That thinking isn’t analytical, not entirely at least. It’s mostly creative thinking. Creative writing is part of the larger content writing work category.

I rely much on creativity. I’ve written a few technical articles on coffee and alcoholic drinks, filled with numbers and references, and yet I’d still consider at least 10% of writing efforts in those, a creativity act. To me, there’s no way around it, creativity is intertwined with any writing.

Therefore, just saying “I’m a content writer” would identify with a more mechanical aspect of the freelance writer role. And I didn’t want that. Using “creator” instead felt like highlighting the creational force in what I write. Creator here is perfectly explicative of how I hope to make things, here texts, that don’t exist, “be”.

And that’s the proudest part of content writing. Making things be, being a creator of texts that were not present before you. It’s motivating, absolutely.

That’s why I went with the full “Fountain Pen Creator” over just my name and surname. Now you know.