Expanding Your Choices to Increase Your Fake Journal Success

As you start thinking seriously about your character for IFJM (because April 1 is fast approaching) I want to encourage you to think about all the options and choices you have which might be fun to explore within the framework of a fake journal.

Consider working with a character who is a complete opposite to yourself. If you are young, create an aged character, and vice versa (actually vice versa for all these choices I'm suggesting). Urban/rural, poor/wealthy, employed/unemployed (and any of the variables within employment as to type and location). You can even change sex but keep in mind that particular characteristic will take some deep thought to come out convincing and consistent.

When you make a decision about all of the components of your character's life and specifics keep in mind that your character has to be literate or at least visually literate in order to keep a journal. And your character has to have enough free time to make the keeping of such a journal a possibility—or he/she has to have such a burning desire to write and draw that even the most daunting of circumstances doesn't stop him/her. (If we are privileged to work one job, to have our basic necessities met, to have some leisure time, we can learn a lot from the perspective of a character who is driven to create despite severe impediments.)

Your fake journal is also a great opportunity for letting your bad girl, girly girl, inner geek guy etc. come out.

Ask yourself what you want to examine in April. Ask what is topmost in your brain as you think of IFJM. Jot down the first things that come to mind. Chances are one of those immediate answers will provide a direction to hold your interest for the thirty days of journaling.

And if your internal critic decides to help you with your choices by telling you to wait, to not participate, or by saying this is all silly, you couldn't possibly journal as a woman working as a grounds keeper at a zoo etc., tell the i.c. to take a break (in what ever verbage you wish to use). Now is the time to get firm with the i.c. This is creative play, he's not needed. He can take a break. Tell it to him kindly, sarcastically, playfully, loudly, it doesn't matter. Just tell him. He'll get the message. Maybe not the first time or the second, but after thirty days he'll know where the new boundary lines are.

May all your choices bring you insights.