I'll return to posting pages from my 2012 fake journal tomorrow—but today I wanted to take a moment to say "Congratulations!" If you have been working along on your own fake journal this month you are 7 days from finishing (if you count today!). That's huge. You set a goal and you've been working towards it.
Even if you have had to miss a day, or if you started late, I hope that you will take a moment today and savor the fact that you have been working towards your goal.
Then you need to get back to work!
And in the last 7 days there is still a lot of work to get done.
Ask yourself the following questions and think about your upcoming entries.
1. Is there a narrative going on and if so is it going to be open ended or will it wrap up?
2. If your narrative is going to wrap up think about what you need to get across in the next few days and make a couple notes. You aren't pre-writing anything, you're thinking about what might happen. Keep this list handy when you sit down and get into your character. Can he or she get some of those details down into an entry? If not, perhaps that's not really where you are heading and you need to listen to that.
3. Remind yourself what your goals for IFJM 2012 were when you started. Did you meet all those goals? Those goals may have been as straightforward as "make an entry each day," "draw with only this special pencil each day," etc.
4. If you have not met one or more of your goals ask yourself how you can still meet those particular goals before the end of the month. For instance, if your goal was to draw buildings but your character craftily avoided looking at buildings for the entire month, put him or her in a situation where she or he has to do that in 3 or 4 of the remaining entries. Go on, you can do it!
5. Are there questions about your character that have not been explored or answered to your satisfaction? Now is the time for him or her to write a little self-analysis in his or her journal?
This is just a short list of possible approaches you can look at in the remaining 7 (or 6 if you've worked in your journal today) entries of your fake journal. Don't end the month with regrets. Push your character to look at his or her life with renewed clarity.
And remind yourself you're almost at the end. Keep going!
Posts
A Letter to the Fans of Esther Rayde
13 years ago
5 comments:
I tried to post this once, but it disappeared so I apologized if it ends up duplicated. I have a question about the etiquette for how to respond to comments on the blog I set up for IFJM. Do I respond in character? It hadn't really occurred to me that people might comment on that blog, I saw it more as an extension of the journal and consistent with how the character would use her journal. So I'd just like another perspective.
Thanks for adding my name to the list of 2012 ifjm pages.
It was perfect timing for me to find your blog and do this type of journalling.
LizzieBo Your earlier message came to me, but is different seems different from what you ask here. Originally I started responding to the other message and said that I think your goal should be to kindly clarify, based on whatever the message is. The kindest way to do this it to respond as yourself and say you're doing a fake journal and explain a bit about that. I doubt most of our characters would be reading blogs and respond to them, and probably most of them are not aware that their journal is being posted somewhere (if you really get right down to it). So I don't see much point in responding to blog comments as your character—UNLESS you're on a blog totally dedicated to the fake blog and it's your character whose posting the pieces and therefore would be the one responding to the comments.
When I got to the last bit of that paragraph I read you comment that did make it through to this blog and it seems that you are working on a dedicated blog. And it's part of the character's actions to post the pieces. If that's the case then you have to decide your own comfort level in keeping in character.
Last year my character created two fake blogs, one under each of her different writing names. She didn't get a lot of comments, but since she was writing the posts she HAD to respond in character. (You can find the two blogs in my blog list at the bottom of the righthand column if you want to go and see what I mean.)
The two blogs she created, however were not simply postings of her journal (which is something she wouldn't have done). I posted those on this blog as I usually do. Her blog instead was something that she created just as she created her regular journal pages, and her paintings, and her other work (she was a very busy character. (Also there is nothing on either of those blogs that explains they are fake.)
Since your character sees it as part of her journaling to be posting her journal, then it seems to me that you'd want to respond to comments in character to keep up the illusion.
But you'll have to draw your own comfort level line on that. Perhaps what you're learning this year through this particular experience is that you are uncomfortable inhabiting a character if you are interacting with someone as that character "in real time" or it brings up other issues of fake/real which only you can get at.
If you've decided that you are going to answer in character and someone comments about fake journals to you your character can of course have some sort of vague response of confusion as to what the comment writer is referring, because these are real events in "my life." But you have to look at how your character would respond to all that and whether you're happy inhabiting that response.
I'd suggest that you think about all the angles on how you might approach this then write (somewhere else, not in your fake journal) about that aspect of the experience.
Roz
Gallery Juana, I'm so glad that you are enjoying your process.
Thank you for your insight. I did have two slightly different angles with both questions. After I couldn't see that the first had posted, I tried to determine if the person who commented was part of IFJM and indeed, she seemed to be listed as a participant in the project. That gives me greater flexibility in my approach. I just hadn't anticipated having comments on the blog (although I'm actually delighted) because I envisioned it as a means of my character communicating to someone who was acting as a kind of mentor to her. Her mentor doesn't respond on the blog for reasons that are "off camera" but clear to me. But now that I can safely assume that the commenter understands the parameters of the project, I have a clear conscious. That was not the case with an easier comment, when that person had wondered over from my main blog before I had put up some clear markers that this was a fake blog, and I really didn't feel comfortable responding in character in that case.
I am having a blast with this project, no pushing though required. Unfortunately I am trying out some new medication and it is really messing with my head so I think what I'm saying is pretty garbled (and boy can I not spell). It's such a pleasure to have my visual journal to jump into when I'm struggling with words (just temporarily till we get this straightened out).
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