Sixth Page Spread in Roz's Fake Journal

Above: the entry for day 6 of my 2009 fake journal shows pigeons. Ziller Acrylic ink and dip pen, with Schmincke pan watercolors. Click on the image to view an enlargement. Read below for a transcript of the text.

I'm posting my pages in order so people following along won't be more confused than necessary. When you read the text on this page you'll see that the person writing the journal has work relationships and a hierarchy at work.

While it makes sense in the situation in this journal, for her to have a note about this, because she is in a new place and just meeting these folks for the first time, remember that this is a useful way for your author to bring in information about his work situation.

You will have to be a bit more subtle about it if your author has been in a situation a long time, i.e., an organizational chart isn't something we just write down everyday in our journals. But we do make comments about our colleagues and through those comments you can get in the information you feel is important.

Why incorporate these types of details? Well first of all it makes the process more satisfying. Journaling of any kind is always best when details, observed and written, abound. Keeping a fake journal is actually training for keeping a more useful real journal!

Next, incorporating these types of details helps get onto the page the thoughts that are swimming in your head about this character, so that years from now you won't sit there and wonder what was up with that author.

Even if you intend to have no one else ever see any portion of your fake journal take a few minutes today to find subtle ways to work in more details about that author's life, people in that life, his attitudes, etc.

We don't tend to note down things that are stable and unchanging, so your push to include such details might propel your author to a turning point in his life. Working through that turning point for him might tell you, when the dust settles and the book closes, a little bit more about your own attitudes, goals, thoughts, life. So give it a try.

Text on the page spread is as follows:

Verso page top to bottom (note: I can't do tables in this window):
09.040.06 5:30 p.m.
Rober made final assignment of teams today at orientation wrap up:
[listed as artist, safety officer, science officer with team number]
1 Ted Miller, Burton (Hopper) Crane, Angie Reed; 2 Morgan Wright, Lou Letz, Alec Grant; 4 Bill Barra, Michelle Kennedy, Nelson Witney; Chuck and I stay together and get Fleck (Fletcher nelso) for science. We're 3

Ink keeps bleeding and muddying up the irridescent colors.

Recto page top to bottom:
Ted said I could keep the supplies I've been borrowing as long as necessary. He's got enought paper for final projects. He always travels with his materials, for just this reason.

I don't know what to make of Fleck, he's 20-something and full of a false bravado…evident in the way he stays close to whatever safety officer happens to be on hand. Chuck seems to like him, they already have code words and shared jokes.

I took a break before dinner to sketch some of the pigeons in the old park on Erie. They cluster together…watchful. Their cooing reassures me. Their red-orange eyes have a yellow core, mesmerizing…or would be if they didn't seem so vacuous.

eyes bulge out

Chuck: "They're flying rats." I don't see it that way—messengers.