If It Prints, I'll Let You Know

Printer Paper Woes

Paper is one of those things I always have lying around. I’m a writer, after all, and it would be a bit silly to be paperless. However, as of late, I’ve found myself running through ream after ream of paper. Not to mention the never-ending supply of black HP printer ink I need to have on hand to keep up.

So what’s the deal with my excessive print outs? One word for you: college.

Sure, I am the typical college student, having to print papers, critical responses and one-pagers at midnight. However, these necessities are not what’s putting me in the print poorhouse.

It’s one class and one class only that is sucking up my ink, feasting on my paper and leaving my wallet all but empty. That class is creative writing.

In order to get valuable feedback from my peers and instructor, I need to print 25 copies of my submission. But get this: we’re writing novels. Yup! You heard me, bonafide novels!

We can’t write a whole novel in a few months for one class, however. No, that would be ridiculous. We only need to submit about 50 pages of this novel, broken into two parts.

Okay, so let’s do the math here. That’s 25 pages at a pop times 25 copies! That’s (brings up the Dashboard calculator) 625 pieces of paper!

I guess that outburst stems from the fact that I’ll be spending my weekend printing out copies of my latest novel section. Even so, I wish there was a solution, or at least a way to save money. I thank my lucky stars I don’t have to use high quality photo paper for this!

I probably won’t employ these tactics this weekend–I’m lazy–but here are a few tips to save money when that beast of a printer is feeling especially paper hungry.

Run A Test: Can you imagine printing all of those copies only to find out there was an error?!? Print one copy first, read through it, make sure the formatting is correct and then try for the whole she-bang.

Print On Both Sides: While this can be incredibly time consuming at home–believe me, I’ve tried it–it is still a good idea to try to print on both sides of the page. You cut your paper usage in half!

Use Remanufactured Ink: Okay, okay, this one doesn’t have to do with paper, but it’s still true. You can save a lot of money by buying remanufactured printer ink.

Have a nice weekend!