The Chaser

Make sure the nib and feed are both fully submerged, not just the nib. The feed's job is to let air in while ink goes out, and if the breather hole is above the ink line you get exactly this.

It's the ink and the nib together: a dry-writing, high surface tension ink in a pen with a slightly tight tine gap. That ink is fine in a wetter pen and that pen is fine with a wetter ink, and the combination is what fails.

Three fixes in increasing order of commitment. Store it nib down for a night to confirm the diagnosis. Add one drop of water per 5ml of ink to drop the surface tension. Or gently widen the tine gap with brass shims, which I'd only do after the first two.

Also check the nib is fully seated. A nib pushed slightly out of alignment gives exactly this symptom with dry inks only.

Then dilute it slightly and you'll probably never think about it again. 10% water is unnoticeable in the colour and makes a real difference to start-up.

Test before you commit next time. Buy one, write a page, then buy the three-pack. I have a shelf of expensive lessons.

Also worth knowing that the same brand can change paper supplier between print runs, so "this notebook was fine two years ago" isn't a guarantee.

Several, for your specific use. Four or five pages a day means the pen gets dropped, left uncapped on a desk for an hour, and forgotten in a bag over a weekend. That's a case for pens you aren't precious about, and multiple pens means you never stop mid-meeting to fill one.

But spend it as two, not four. Roughly 70-80 on two known-good workhorses in different nib widths, and keep the rest for ink, decent paper and a bulb syringe, because paper affects your daily experience more than the pen does. Buying four and finding you dislike the nib width on all four is the failure mode here.

The gold nib argument is real but it's about feel rather than performance, and you can't evaluate feel from a website.

Fair, and I'd agree if this were a journalling question. Meeting notes is a tools job, not a pleasure job, at least until you know what you like.

Try it on different paper before concluding anything. Toothy paper turns a slightly firm nib into sandpaper on upstrokes, and the same nib feels glassy on a coated sheet.