Holding on to the Momentum

Left: Day 20 entry from my 2014 fake journal. Large acrylic markers on 22 x 30 inch paper (toes present at the bottom of the image for scale reference). My character didn't feel inclined to write anything on this day.

One of the great gifts an intensive, daily project can impart to your creative life is momentum.

As we are now at the two-thirds point of International Fake Journal Month, with only 10 days remaining (if you haven't created your entry for today), it's time to think about post-project momentum.

During the next few days take time to select a new journal for your regular journaling habit (if you don't have one that is in process). Or select a new journal to create a new project within.

Ask yourself the following questions:

1. What has worked this month so far, and what hasn't worked? When have I been most likely to work on the project? What factors contribute to this?

Perhaps you've found that late evening work is easiest to maintain because that's when your family duties are completed. Or perhaps you've found that working in your journal first thing is the best way to start your day and ensure your participation in the project.

2. Look at your commitments for May. It may help you to mark them on a calendar: family, work projects and deadlines, special events that you'll hope to attend, etc.

With your calendar in front of you work out a strategy for maintaining your desired level of journaling time and write those commitments on your calendar if necessary. (It helps some people to make "dates" or "appointments" with their journals.)

3. Ask yourself what media you would like to work with in May. Do you want to perfect your colored pencil skills? Are your watercolors calling to you because you couldn't use them this month?

4. Is there a project you want to do with that medium? Perhaps you want to work on your watercolor skills and have a favorite "how-to" watercolor book that you want to work through. Set up a simple project where you read a chapter of the book each day and do an exercise or some sort of practice based on that book each day. Keep your subject matter simple and accessible. I recommend studies of fruits and vegetables. You always have them on hand; they can be set up quickly; they contain simple shapes that can be interestingly lit and composed; and you can apply most drawing, painting and color theory exercises to them. Do you think it will be boring to draw a couple fruits or vegetables every day for the next several weeks? Well it's up to your creative instincts and insights to find ways to delve into the subject and capture your own interest, while you work on your skills project.

5. Assess the amount of time the project you want to do in items 3 and 4 might take. I recommend that if you've been working for 30 minutes each day of IFJM that you not increase your daily time beyond 60 minutes a day.

6. How will this new time commitment fit into the calendar that you have prepared in item 2?

7. Ask yourself what types of emotional issues came up during IFJM. How do you expect to deal with them? Are you able to deal with them in conjunction with the project you've considered going on to? If not, is it more important to deal with those emotional issues before you jump into a skills-based project? If it is, then make a list of the issues that came up and make a schedule of how "ideally" you would like to cope with them—writing about an issue for one hour for two days is probably as much as you'll feel up to. Maybe just one hour on one day.

Realize you aren't going to solve these issues you're just going to sit with them for the time that you're assigning.

8. Redo your calendar to fit your "issues" project. Let's say you have 9 issues on your list—things like my inner critic is too loud when I work in color, when I try to draw realistically, etc. Assign one or two days to each "issue" when you'll spend 1 hour writing about and brainstorming ways you might fix it.

9. Mark your calendar May 1 through 12 let's say because you have 9 issues and you want to write 1 hour on some of them and 2 hours/2 days on others.

10. Mark May 12 as the start of your new project. This will either be your skills based project you decided upon in items 3 and 4, OR it will be an new project that has come up in your May 1 through 12 discussions with yourself.

11. Gather all the materials you need so that you can execute your plan on May 1. Gather any additional items needed for May 12. (You might as well combine as much of this as you can to save time, if it seems clear to you.)

Remember, gathering materials DOESN'T MEAN SPENDING MONEY! Gathering materials means you go to the library and pick up that book on color theory you wanted to work through, or it means that you pull out the paper you've been saving for a project, or you do research on the internet for subject matter that you want to read and respond to in your writing. (Put it all in one folder on your computer so you can find it all again, or put all the links in one document.) You might simply go through old magazines and gather materials for collage. Put things in 6 folders such as Women, Men, Animals, Things, Words, and Color. These will contain the materials you'll work with during your project—materials you already had. If you start gathering things before you are ready to start your project then you'll be able to jump right in on that project the first day—momentum retained!

Spending money and running about buying more art supplies is one of the major ways in which your inner critic can derail your efforts. Don't buy into the thoughts that there are perfect supplies out there, or the perfect time to use certain supplies. This is all a fog of perfectionism and scarcity.

Now if you've been paying attention you'll say, "wait a minute I'm actually doing several things on several days and I don't get a day off."

That's right—you'll be multitasking, which is one of the key ways to keep momentum going.

When you finish a large project it's not time to take a breath and stop. It's time to start another one. And keep that momentum going. Use the great gush of good feeling you have from finishing the previous project to propel you into the next.

A week or so into the new project it's time to take stock.

And you'll do that in the same way that you took stock at the end of IFJM—by looking at what worked and what didn't and planning, and well, by starting at number one on this list and working your way through again.

Momentum.

Keep it going, it's the best creative gift you can give yourself. Don't fritter away the creative habit building you've banked this past month.

You won't get tired or exhausted because your creativity will buoy you up. Your internal critic will however get pretty fed up with you because you aren't giving him a moment to shout out at you.

Fine, let him go play with someone else.

You've got creative things to do.

Another word about Issues…

I think we all need to do self-evaluations and look hard at what are our real strengths and weaknesses so that we can address them in a realistic way and improve. But I also believe we can wallow in emotions that are self-indulgent and non-productive.

That's why I always suggest people look for skills-based projects. What do you want to learn how to do or to improve upon your existing skills? If you look for projects like those and work hard at them the emotional issues you are concerned with will float up to the top and demand periodic attention in the natural course of things. Don't spend too much time running in circles, that's your inner critic trying to delay you again, telling you it's impossible to move forward if "everything isn't settled and right."

Nothing is ever going to be settled until the day you die. Somedays you'll settle an issue that may have bothered you from the age of 2; the next day you settle an issue that has bothered you since you were 35. Then you just "plod" along working and learning and mastering a skill and not setting any issues or any emotional import at all, until one day, perhaps a month later you realize that while you've been working hard at your creative task and plan another issue has sorted itself out on its own.

If you'd waited to start a creative project until you sorted everything out you've be poorer—both emotionally and in the skills you'd developed. Instead you're now in a totally different place with creative work under your belt—creative work that's getting better and better.

So don't wallow. It's so boring.

Using Your Fake Journal to Fight Creative Blocks

I've been getting a lot of private notes recently from people who are interested in using IFJM as a tool to fight creative blocks. The blocks all vary and are individually tailored (of course, that's how it works), but several are "blocks to keeping a journal." And keeping a fake journal can be used to clear that block in a variety of ways. I wrote about a few of those ways in a note on my other blog to a reader who asked about this publicly on Roz Wound Up, and I think my note might be useful to some folks reading this blog.

Keep in mind that in order to get your April experience going you will need to do a little bit of work in the next couple of days to prepare—you'll need to sit with your REAL journal and ask yourself a few questions so that you can avoid the same issues in your fake set up.

Here's my advice:

IFJM can be a great tool for fighting blockage, for really looking at the cause and finding ways to work around it in your life. 

Be sure to find a way to really limit the time involvement you require each day for your fake journal so that working in the journal doesn't become yet another instigator of blockage, e.g., "I don't have time for the fake journal I really have to do such and such." 

Find something that you can do in 15 minutes or less. 

Think about a character who always puts art or observation first. Imagine what it's like to have a regular appointment for that 15 minutes, or set up situations for the month where you will have outings or instances where you will have 15 minutes at odd times to sketch and journal. 

I would also suggest you keep you supplies to a minimum so you aren't side-tracked with thinking "which medium will I use today?"—picking one medium to use for the whole month and to explore with is something totally doable in 15 minutes a day. 

Also think of what it is you want to say and do in your REAL journal and then ask yourself why you don't do that. (This is best done before IFJM begins. Set an appointment to write, or also do it in small bursts of time as thoughts come to you during the day—just write down what pops into your head and look at it all at the end of the day.) 

Next think about a character who 1. either doesn't want to do those things in his/her journal so you'll do the exact opposite of what YOU would do during the month in his or her journal, or 2. someone who does those things and what does that person's life look like? All of that will help you get into the character for 15 minutes a day. 

And lastly realize that your character is going to have a totally different dialogue with his/her internal critic because he/she isn't blocked. What is that dialog like? That character won't write or journal about that because it is just a fact of life, so you might, when you think of this (maybe before you go to bed at night) take a few minutes to write in your REAL journal about that.  

Remember habit building happens in 28 days. It's more important to get something done in the habit building time than to create something great! First you have to get the habit in place. That's another reason IFJM and fake journals are a good way to start a journaling habit—because you are doing something daily for 30 days. (Remember you don't run a record marathon your first day of training, you may only run around the block. If you're using IFJM to break a creative block on journaling focus on running around the block each day, the rest will come later after you have the habit.)

Also keep in mind that life happens. If you're using IFJM to combat a tendency not to journal and already have a habit of avoiding or putting off journaling when life happens you'll need to work harder to avoid that habit during IFJM and find ways to meet that 15 minutes a day you've set for yourself. That will be difficult for most people in this situation.

And it will feel UNCOMFORTABLE, because breaking a habit (here the habit of avoidance) is an uncomfortable process. Habits (either good or bad) feel good and comfortable to our minds and our bodies because they are habits (ask anyone who's ever tried to change his life in the smallest way). But if we persevere in the breaking of bad habits, by creating new habits, we have much to gain. It's worth a bit of discomfort.

If your blockage is not about journaling but instead is about using one particular medium or one technique more the equation is a bit simpler—you simply substitute that medium or technique into the time you already spend journaling, just for the month. This doesn't mean you won't do any regular journaling, but you may find you do less of that in April. Any habit change is going to take some accommodation and adjustment in the rest of our life.

Again, it might feel uncomfortable to use the different medium you elect to stick with, or it might be difficult to start at the beginning with a new technique. You are still breaking out of your comfort zone and your internal critic is going to jump out and let you have it.

All your character latitude to deal with the internal critic in his or her own way—you might learn some new techniques you can bring back to your real life.

Remember too to be kind to yourself. If you miss a day don't beat yourself up. Just make sure you work first thing the next morning, or set a watch alarm for a time later in the day and keep that appointment regardless of how you feel at the time. It's "just do it" time. Get into your character's mode. Remember too that your character doesn't have blockage, doesn't have a reason to stop so you can be assured that the next day he/she won't even see today's miss as a blip on the grand continuum of life. That's where you want to put your focus too, on that continuum.

One more thing. However wonderful it may be to share your work with others as you go through this journey, and however much you count on people's support when you share your work, if you are working on a block of any sort it may be best not to share your work during April.

I tell my journaling students this about their regular journaling work all the time when I have multi-session classes where we work on good journaling habits. It's fine to share work within the confines of the class where everyone is working on the same plan and developing good boundaries, positive "critique" methods, and understands what the goals are. But in the general world, and even in your own family there will be people who just don't "get" what you're up to.

Would you rather spend all of April not just explaining to those people that you want to journal more and why that is, but why you're using IFJM to find a way to do it? Or would you rather get down and busy at actually changing something?

Why risk a stray comment from someone who actually might even mean well—a comment which could derail you?

If it's time to do serious work and you don't already have good boundaries and techniques for dealing with your internal critic the best time to share your fake journal is in MAY,  AFTER IFJM is over.

Why? Because then no comments can derail you. You're already finished with the project. And you hold it in your hand. You know exactly what it took for you to do it. You may never be able to explain to anyone what it took, or how you even did it, but you don't have to. You just need to know that you did it. And that's the gift you give yourself for getting through the month.

Besides, this year it's "NO Explanations" remember?!

So think about those considerations to as you set up your plan for IFJM 2014. Good luck.