Tenth Page Spread in Roz's 2011 Fake Journal

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Above is the 10th page spread in my 2011 fake journal. It was created on April 9, 2011.

An Explanation of Roz's 2011 Fake Journal

Since the buttons are flying off to participants it seemed like a good time to let people in on everything that is happening here with my fake journal—who is the author, what does she do for a living, etc.

Because the explanation is a bit lengthy I decided to post it as a page:
What Was She Thinking?—Roz's 2011 Fake Journal Explained.

So if you are interested in who, what, where, when, how—go check it out.

That only leaves Why? To which I can only respond, "Why not?"

Now you understand a bit better why this year's slogan is "Dig Deep."

The Participation Buttons Have Arrived!

Above: The 2.25-inch button design for International Fake Journal Month 2011. (The actual button does not have a black outline.)

As many of you may have ascertained, Esther Rayde, children's book author and illustrator, is my character for 2011. (Well, not REALLY—but more about this in a separate post later today.)

Pierce, the French Bulldog from Esther Rayde's book, "The Year of the French Bulldog" is on this year's button.

Each year, in addition to the main blog slogan "Life's so short, why live only one," there is a button slogan.

This year's slogan is "Dig Deep." And that's not just because Pierce is a dog, it's because that's fake journaling at its best—when you dig deep.

Once again the folks at Pure Buttons did a fantastic job. These buttons are so bright, shiny, and well made that I can't stop smiling. You'll love it.

Buttons are going out today (Monday, April 18) FREE to all the journal keeping participants who followed instructions and sent in their postal address with their entry. People who didn't, were sent an email on Sunday and, have until Sunday, April 24 to email rozjournalrat@gmail.com with their postal address (don't add it as a comment to this blog). 

Note: People participating in the promotional aspect of the contest—your buttons are being held for you until the final check of your blog at the end of that contest, in May. If you do not send me your postal address, by April 24, however, you will not receive a button in MAY.

Note: People participating in more than one contest will only receive one button. If you are participating in both the posting and promotional contests your button goes out today with the other posting participants buttons.

After Monday, April 25, anyone who wants one of the remaining buttons (supply is very limited) can order a button for postage and packaging costs. (I'll update this post when I get back from the Post Office and know what that is going to be.) The buttons themselves will still be free.

Thank you again to all the hardworking participants who are making this such a fun International Fake Journal Month 2011. Thank you for giving me a reason to make buttons!

New Image for First Page Spread in Roz's 2011 Fake Journal Posted

Since I found out that I can actually scan my oversized journal on my scanner, with a little bit of overlap for knitting together, I went back this weekend and scanned the first page spread.

If you return to the First Page Spread in Roz's 2011 Fake Journal post you'll be able to see the improved image. I hope you enjoy seeing this improved view.

When Enough is Enough: Stopping Your Fake Journal?

It's past the half-way mark for people who started their fake journal on April 1. I thought this would be a good time to discuss stopping early.

Here's a little secret. This year, 2011, I experienced a huge epiphany on day two of my fake journal. (I started before April for logistical reasons, which means that on March 27 the light bulb turned on.) The epiphany was so clear, so loud and persistent, that I felt confident I'd learned what I needed from the experience and could stop. I didn't stop, however. I'm holding out for a couple more epiphanies, or so much irritation that I can't wait to get back to my own life full time. But I wanted to share thoughts with you on when to throw in the towel on your fake journal.

1. If you're uneasy, uncomfortable, maybe a little queasy, scared, frustrated, and your feet don't feel right in your shoes: Keep Working!

Don't quit on the time table of your internal critic or your subconscious or even your general habit (which might be to end things early). Quit on your own terms.

a. Assess the situation. Ask where the discomfort is coming from. Think about how you might be able to address that discomfort by changing media, making more time to work on your journal, taking less time to work on your journal, etc. Make a list of what comes up in your questioning and address it.

b. Consider ways to tighten up your goals by scaling back on the scope and breadth of your project. (Do 30 minutes a day, instead of one hour. Do one page a day instead of one page spread. Stick to only one type of medium. Stick with or return to a medium you are comfortable using.)

c. Focus on finishing the project rather than posting your results daily on a blog or website. For some people the scanning and posting adds too many extra steps to their already time-squeezed days. Finish your journal project first, then in MAY scan and post your results. The project is important—not when you post. (Alternately some people may find it helps to post everyday to get their momentum moving.)

2. If you have an earth shattering epiphany about your creative process—don't stop your fake journal. Keep going another two days while you take time to also think about that epiphany and what it means in your life. After two days of digestion, you'll know whether there is any point in continuing the fake journal, e.g., "I found out X, now what else can I find out?" Literally ask yourself that. (This is the position I was in this year.)

3. If your whole life seems topsy-turvy, the dishes aren't getting done, and you feel so much stress some other aspect of your life is becoming unhealthy (e.g., you see your coffee consumption increase), back off of the project and participate three days a week, or even one or two days a week only. You'll keep up the momentum. You'll still learn something. You won't be giving in to your internal critic.

In any type of exercise, physical or creative, we have to push ourselves past our current ability and habits and patterns. It's where the growth and learning take place. But part of that growth and learning comes in the form of new knowledge about ourselves and how far we can push without collapse.

Keep that in mind as you work in your fake journal. You are pushing to get stronger, not to wear yourself out.

Don't quit—assess and stop on your terms.

As for me, yep, I'm still working in my journal, even though I have a sense of my limitations with the project and really want to start exploring the epiphany further. I know two things. 1. The epiphany, if genuine, will hold for another two weeks. And 2. I know enough about myself to know that there's more to come out of this process if I hold in there for the month. (I know this about myself because I've done these types of projects over and over again. If this is the first time you have done something like this you might be learning this for the first time.)

I also know I'll enjoy the completeness of it—we get so little completeness in real life. I also know that at the last hour, in the last push, some final barrier will part and I'll get even more. (Again because I've done this before.)

The deal is to know yourself, and to give yourself a chance to grow. If you want to stop, look at the steps above. Think again.

If you still want to stop after your assessment, do so on your terms, knowing that you do it because it's right to do so at this time. Take a moment to write down what you have learned, the difficulties you've encountered, what you could have planned for better, and so on. Basically take some time to honor the project by debriefing yourself. Allow an hour at least, and do it on the day you decide to end the project. It is important to do it when all of your reasons are fresh in your mind.

By honoring your project in this way you can walk away from it with self-learning, while your internal critic just stands there slack-jawed, and powerless.


Here's another secret, which isn't all that secret, because I've written about it here before. What you learn keeping a fake journal can be applied to your daily life, your real journal. If you have always wanted to keep a real journal but have always stopped for some reason, now is the time to set yourself a new goal, one month of real journaling. And during that month, if you feel you aren't going to fit it in your life, go through these steps and assessments.

Journaling isn't for everyone. People process their lives differently. You won't know if journaling is really an activity and process for you, however, until you really honor the process and give it a fair shot. Queasy stomach and uncomfortable feet and all.

The quicker you show up and assess journaling as it might fit in your life and process the quicker you'll be able to get on with it—or move on and find that process which really does speak to you and your creative needs.

Ninth Page Spread in Roz's 2011 Fake Journal

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The above left page and first column of the right-hand page were done on April 7. The remaining work was done on April 8.

The text on the left-hand page reads:

4.7.11  12:30 a.m.
Lunch remains 
Exterior
Interior
Pitch to Pat—Kiley Ramsay—forensics artists
What it's about. She's just out of school and economy is bad, no jobs.
Who does she work for—agency/dept.?
Normal duties.
How she's embroiled in murders.
What's the proper term?

Next column:
Drawing Your Heart Out
Drawing from Death
Drawing Your Last Breath
Death Penciled in
Murder in Grisaille
Murder in the Abstract
  (too fine art-ish) [mark for both the last two]
Portrait of a Murder
Palour (sp?) in Pastel
*Chalk Up Another Death*

First column on the right-hand page—You're on your own. Even I can't read it at this point.

Second column on the right-hand page:
I'm exceedingly frustrated that I can't remember things like my bike wheel circumferance so I can enter it into my bike computer—which needed a new battery (as it does every year) and lost its data.


Life seems to be a succession of battery replacements and changings never in sync. Yesterday the alarm system battery today the bike computer, always the cell phone. 4.8.11 noon.

Third column on the right-hand page:
B: You ask those questions people stop asking at 4.
T: Don't you still need those answers?
4.8.11 10 p.m.

Eighth Page Spread in Roz's 2011 Fake Journal

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The text on the spread above is written around the edges of the pages. On the far left edge of the page, running up vertically from the bottom of the page the text reads: 4.6.11 a.m. Sunny, high 40s degree F. E.R. Flats.

At the base of the page, starting at the left and running along the bottom of the page and up the right fore edge of the right-hand page the text reads: the whole meeting was an elaborately staged act of misdirection—DAVID GRANN in New Yorker, April, 4 issue on the assasination [sic] of Rodrigo Rosenberg in Guatemala.

Seventh Page Spread in Roz's 2011 Fake Journal

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In the above page spread the horse shooting research continues on the verso page. The photo of Jackie Kennedy-Onassis on the recto page (April 5 entry)  is ©1971 Ron Galetta and was torn by the journal keeper from an advertisement in the New Yorker Magazine.

The handwritten text on the verso page reads as follows:
April 4, 2011  7:05 p.m. "Do you want your caramel now?" I ask. He  nods, not even taking his eye from the road. I unwrap the wax paper carefully, without touching any surface of the candy, a rectangular log. Using the wrapper as a glove, pinched on one side I hold the candy up for him. Keeping his eyes forward he turns and nibbles the candy off the sheet with his teeth. He laughs. "I don't want you to get any germs," I say. "I love you more than anything." And then I laugh at my own germphobia. (On the way back from cake.)

Sixth Page Spread in Roz's 2011 Fake Journal

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Printed text on the above spread is a collection of articles on horse shootings, with authors listed for each note. The handwritten text reads as follows:

April 3, 2011  9:30 a.m.
File Reasearch folder in Box 2—2011
All notes including book list.
Pat Called on Friday and we talked about my horse idea. Despite some of the accounts I dug up—or in her mind because of them—she is not sold on the idea at all. I've been processing my arguments and still think I can make a great novel on a serial killer in training. Pat argues 1.  follow the money and do the insurance angle and 2. No one wants to read a hard, gritty forensic book from me. "They expect your snarky tone and an occasional (sp?) bit of "wisdom" from Jones.["] I'll move on to the next idea for now, but I'll keep this much out to keep it in mind.

Fifth Page Spread in Roz's 2011 Fake Journal

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I know that I wasn't going to do explanations, but with this spread I have to do a short one. On the verso page that bantam is a sketch I did last fall in my journal (with the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen). Well I used a scan of it to make a transfer with Rub-onz, a product I reviewed on my regular blog.

Here's the text from the Verso page:

The Answer Starts with the Right Question. For me today that's Who?
[below bantam]
•Hazel, fanny, Maureen (Mo).
•Bainbridge, O'Reilly, Cower, Corby, Booth, Harris, Price, Bell, Locke, Gordon, Parkinson, Frazer, Foster

main column of text:

4.1.2011  5 p.m.
All over the neighborhood even this late, I can hear hammering. People are having their roofs fixed—a bumper crop of ice dams have [sic] led to this. It's 43 degrees F and finally a little low sun after a cloudy day…but still some snow on the ground. I should have gone out for a walk when the sun came out but I convinced myself I was tough enough to read John M. Barry's "The Great Influenza." I've taken stabs at it throughout the day and I keep putting it down. No problem reading about Marburg but influenza accounts make me queasy. I heard Barry giving a talk on MPR the other day and "[sic] thought ["]there's something I need to look into for future reference." Well not today. And it's not really in my line anyway. Not poison, not mayhem of the usual sort. Indiscriminate, uncontrolled. He writes that when influenza kills it kills through pneumonia. Evan Osnos in the 3.28.11 New Yorker has an article on the Japanese earthquake, tsunami, and reactor radiation problems. He writes very clearly about the devastation. He talks about an outbreak of influenza in Kamaishi threatening the survivors.