[fian]

Yep, have similar problems with ballpoints and soft-leaded pencil.

At the moment I am mostly using Artline 200 Fine 0.4mm pens. These are not ballpoints and the think ink lines dry fast, so the text is hard to smudge. They are not without issue though. As the nibs are only crimped into place and writing with your left hand means you are pushing down and to the right; the nibs slowly get pushed up into the pen body. So I have to replace them when the nib disappears which is before the ink runs out.

If I am forced to use ballpoints for any lengthy text I end up rotating the paper close to 90 degrees and writing at an extreme angle to get the pen to drag rather than push across the page.