The legend says that NASA in the 1960s, during the height of the space race, had its scientists realized that pens could not function in zero gravity. They therefore spent years and millions of dollars developing a ballpoint pen that could put ink to paper without needing gravitational force to pull on the fluid.
The device, patented in 1965, The Space Pen (also known as the Zero Gravity Pen), marketed by Fisher Space Pen Company, is a pen that uses pressurized ink cartridges and is able to write in zero gravity, underwater, over wet and greasy paper, at any angle, and in a very wide range of temperatures: An engineering beauty!
The Soviet astronauts used a pencil.
Sometimes being creative is also getting out of a mainstream of idea and make use of simple available solutions.