Welcome to International Fake Journal Month 2013!

What is IFJM?
Please read the page "What Is IFJM" for details.
Learn the difference between Faux, Fake, and Fake Historical Journals.

2019 IFJM Celebration
IFJM has been suspended indefinitely. Please read the pinned post about this below.

Participants who Post Their Journals
A list of 2018 participants who are posting their fake journals this year will appear near the top of the right side bar of this blog around April 6. Lists of participants who posted their pages in 2010 through 2017 appear lower in the same column. Please pay them a visit and check out their fake journals.

View a Couple of Roz's Past Fake Journals
Roz's 2009 fake journal takes place in an alternate Twin Cites, where disease has killed the human and bird populations. (It ends up being an upbeat tale of friendship.) Watch a video flip through of Roz's 2009 fake journal here.

Read an explanation of Roz's insanely complex 2011 fake journal.

Tips on Keeping a Fake Journal
Click on "tips" in the category cloud.

Remember, "Life's so short, why live only one?"


Friday, March 18, 2011

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.

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