While there is not going to be a public celebration of International Fake Journal Month 2026 I know that many others, myself included, will be keeping fake journals to celebrate the practice privately.
Several people have written to me asking about a public celebration and to tell me they miss the project.
Others have simultaneously been writing to me to talk about projects that are, from their description, going to be impossible for them to complete in the time they are allotting.
I was concerned about the latter so I wrote a post on my main blog RozWoundUp about finishing projects.
It's important for creative momentum that you actually finish projects.
In addition I have included my character checklist and a prompts list from 2018's IFJM celebration in that post. (The original post on RWU they appeared in is now in a non-public archive with other posts that need to be fixed.)
They are PDFs you can download for reference, and found at the above RozWoundUp link.
The character checklist will be helpful if you want to create a fake journal in April on your own.
The prompt list isn't an ordinary prompt list—it has five different categories of daily prompts with instructions on how to use them.
You can use one or more prompt each day in a daily project. Or you can read the lists and usage suggestions and think about how you can create your own prompts. The hope is that you'll start seeing the prompts all about in the world and bring that new vision back to any journal you are keeping.
Note: If you want to be surprised by the prompts daily you can go to this April 1 post from 2018 and get the prompts for that day, then follow newer post (at the bottom left of the post), each day to discover what the prompts for an individual day is.
Being able to self-start is the ultimate momentum building creative gift that journaling gives us. IFJM was originally devised to hone that skill by side stepping and finding a new perspective through which to communicate with a journal, to break some old habits.
But self-starting, and the ability to look around and see what you want to communicate about, and then owning that output because it comes from the real you, is a skill every creative person needs to foster.
I hope you'll have fun with the lists posted at RozWoundUp. And I hope that you'll have fun with your journals (of any type).
If you decide to keep a fake journal, remember to read this post which explains the parameters of what a fake journal is. This will keep you from falling into to traps that will make it difficult for you to complete your project, e.g., like having a non-human character who can't keep a journal—that's something you could pursue in the Novel in a Month celebration held every November.
If you do keep a fake journal and you post pages on social media use #2026IFJM and the algorithm may let others of us find you.
Life's so short, why live only one?
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