On the pencil front, I recommend checking out kuru toga pencils. They rotate the lead slightly with every cycle of applied pressure and release, so you don't ge

On the pencil front, I recommend checking out kuru toga pencils. They rotate the lead slightly with every cycle of applied pressure and release, so you don't get the lead worn down until you're writing at a shallow angle with a much larger effective cross section of lead. On the fountain pen side, just be aware that if you work in an office environment, you'll have to deal with low quality paper that's incompatible with fountain pens. In that way paper is like fruit and vegetables: there's an enormous amount of variation in quality, and it's not terribly expensive to get something really good, but as a country the US has decided it's a commodity, so we just use the lowest quality white rectangles money can buy.