Nineteenth Entry in Roz's 2010 Fake Journal

Left: my nineteenth entry in my 2010 fake journal. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

I'm just playing around with the new composing window in blogger. I don't know how long they've had it, but I just noticed it while changing some other settings. The good thing about it is that it lets you load images differently. You used to have to load in reverse order as new images always appeared at the top of the post and that was very annoying for multi-image posts. But there are some other things I've haven't quite worked out yet so who knows how this will look. (Not sure I've got the right caption color for one.)

If something very strange appears when you visit please drop me a line to alert me!

In the meantime I'm going to keep posting these images, and will have more to say about them later in the week when I get through the contest business.

I hope you are having a good first few days post-International-Fake-Journal-Month. Is your new journal glad to have you back full time? Did it never even notice you were gone? Is it enthusiastic about your new approaches? (OK, I do tend to anthropomorphize everything.)

Note: one thing I've noticed in switching is that I can't get the same color for my caption color and special text. I'll have to use a different one until I find a way to get back to it and so far I haven't. Also setting the font got messed up going back and forth.

Fake, Fake, Fake—Layers of Fake: A Flip Through of Roz's 2010 Fake Journal

Above is a short video flip through of my 2010 fake journal. Sadly the quality of the videos my tiny camera makes isn't such that you can read the post-it note on the cover or the handwritten note inside the cover—but those are all part of the fake journal. They were written by ANOTHER fake character, not the one keeping the journal. They'll appear in scanned form at the end of my individual posts of the pages.

For now you can see the wonderful distorted shape the APICA notebook took on during the month of April. And you can see all the pages from April 1 through April 30 in a quick flip through that will give you an overview of the project.

If the embedded video doesn't work please view the video of Roz's 2010 fake journal here.

Eighteenth Entry in Roz's 2010 Fake Journal

Left: my eighteenth entry in my 2010 fake journal. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

Sorry no little video ready yet. I didn't have time to set up the camera this morning—I went on a great, but windy bike ride. But I'll get to it soon.

In the meantime—here's the next image from my fake journal, if you have been "reading" along.

Remember—no rest for the weary today—turn to your regular journal full focus.

International Fake Journal Month Ends, and the Seventeenth Entry in Roz's 2010 Fake Journal

Left: the seventeenth entry in my 2010 fake journal. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

Today is the final day of 2010's celebration of International Fake Journal Month. I finished my 30th sketch and the accompanying text this morning. The glue is still drying on the colored paper insert. Sometime tonight or tomorrow I'll take a little video of the completed journal and post it so that you can "page through it."

I'll still post the remaining images chronologically if you want to stop by and see them in more detail. Also those pages will give me a visual for a few more wrap up posts I will need to make—winners of each of the contests, some post-fake-journal-month notes about what I learned, that sort of thing. Maybe even a couple suggestions that will get you off the fence for next year's celebration?

But right now my focus has shifted to sorting through the two contest folders and making sure I have everyone in the correct folders, meeting the contest rules, etc. I was so excited to have so many people join in this year. I hope that it was a not overly stressful endeavor—in fact I hope it was challenging and fun.

I also am grateful for those who chose to promote the event on their blogs. I am hopeful each year that the project will grow and people spreading the word are a constant help to that.

I was so pleased with the participation on every level this year that I have decided to make a commemorative button (you all know I love buttons) and send it out to all the participants and promoters. So if you were a promoter who included your address in your email and posted the button link to this blog on your blog by April 10 and kept it up until May 3 you'll be getting a thank-you button in the mail. If you participated by keeping your own fake journal and you posted your entries on your blog and sent me links to five such entries (pages or spreads) over the course of April you'll also be receiving a thank-you button in the mail.

The participation contest is over today but I'll do a last check of the promotion blogs on May 3 and have the drawing for the two prize books also on that date. Book winners will be posted here on May 4, but I'll hold on to the books until I also have the buttons to send out at the same time.

So that's the plan for the next few days as the organizational end of this celebration winds down. I'll thank you all at least a couple times over the next couple weeks I'm sure. However, today I would not only like to thank you all for making this an interesting and visually stimulating fake journal month, but I would also like to congratulate you!

I want to thank you all for rising up to the challenge to push yourselves creatively in April 2010. The fake journal that you hold in your hands is a testament to your creative commitment. It doesn't matter if you have a few entries or 30 or 70. It doesn't matter if you filled your book or still have lots of empty pages. What matters is that you followed your intention to stretch your creative muscle and put that intention into practice in your already full life. You carved out time for yourself. You experimented with new media. You tested new paper and books. You listened to that inner voice that says softly "I want to say something." You let that voice be heard over your internal critic.

For some of you it was excruciatingly difficult. For some of you it was easy. For others it was deceptively easy. All of you have something to think about now—your creative process. What works, what doesn't, where do you want to go, what do you want your regular journal to be, how do you want to give voice to your creativity?

There aren't easy answers to any of these questions, and the answers will change over the course of your life. But when you complete a creative project of this nature you give yourself an opportunity to examine these questions and move forward in your life and art with intention instead of impulse.

Don't get me wrong. Impulse is great. But if you give impulse a little guidance by doing a little reflection on your creative process you are able to clear out a lot of clutter and find a sustaining satisfaction in your work.

Don't worry if your friends and family look at your fake journal and mumble, "What's up with that?" (Or worse, tell you "that sucks.") You don't owe anyone else an explanation—only yourself.

Don't worry if your fake journal isn't at the artistic level you set for yourself or to which you normally work. That's your internal critic coming up behind you to whisper in your ear and cause you to doubt yourself and question your intention.

Every page of your fake journal might be complete shit. You might have just created 30 pages of the ugliest sketches and paintings and idiotic writing on the planet—it still doesn't make your internal critic right. It's a step, one that you took, despite the chattering of that internal critic. Future steps will be easier because you took one. (And this will continue to be true every day you take such a step.)

You hold in your hands a document which says "I allowed myself to create; I allowed myself to take risks." I think creative risks are like loose rocks on a hillside. We scramble over them, slipping at times, at other times finding sure footing, so that we can get to the top of the hill and have a better view.

I think having a better view (of ourselves, our creative process, our place in the world, the larger world, the people in our world) is what regular journaling is all about.

My wish for all of you who participated in this year's celebration of International Fake Journal Month is that you take what you learned about yourself and your process and use what you learned to make your regular journal practice stronger, deeper, more challenging, and integral in your life.

Thank you for sharing your journals with me, and for allowing me to share mine with you.

This is the point where if you were all here in Minneapolis we would go over to Cafe Latte and have a piece of cake and laugh and share our journals, and ooh, and ahh. One of us, I'm not saying who, would probably even cry a bit. There would be absolutely no hugging (I'm not a hugger)—OK some of you would hug on the way out to the cars. I wouldn't be annoyed at all. We would all drive home with insanely crazy smiles on our faces. But we would drive carefully because the satisfaction of successful play had grounded us all.

That's what successful play feels like. It has weight and substance. It doesn't evaporate. You have a tangible reminder on your bookshelf right now. Remember that this year as you observe your real life. You can choose to have that feeling every day.

Congratulations on pushing yourselves creatively.

Preparing for End and the Sixteenth Entry in Roz's 2010 Fake Journal

Left: the sixteenth entry in my 2010 fake journal. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

On day 16 the author of my fake journal fell in love with this person's nose. I have to say I did too.

This morning, the author of my fake journal completed the penultimate sketch, and for me there's a definite tug—"What am I going to do on Saturday?" I know what's happening Friday when this wraps up. It became obvious about a week in, and then it became inevitable, then it didn't seem so, and then again it became so. But what about Saturday, with this time I have always set aside for the fake journal? It happens every year.

In my April 25 post I urged you to make plans for May 1. I'm repeating that urging so you know how serious I am.

In the past some participants have actually felt bereft when the celebration is over. And they miss their fake journal author.

Well, maybe, if you are very attached to your fake journal author he/she can write you letters during the year and stay in touch. You don't have to completely let them go. I'm a huge fan of writing letters and would love to see the illustrated letter make a come back—think about it.

Other participants are happy to see the fake journal authors pick up their tools and leave.

Regardless of how you feel about your fake journal author, please remember that May 1 is the perfect time to establish a useful and on-going switch of journal practices to carry forth in your regular journal. You get to take anything good that you unearthed and apply it forward in your regular journal. You get to leave behind anything annoying, unfruitful, and not useful—knowing that you learned in the process how to approach those "things."

If you worked hard in your fake journal all month, daily, or almost so, don't take a vacation on May 1—keep going. Life and journaling are in part about momentum. Keep the creative machinery clicking, keep it fed, keep your appointment with your creativity.

The "Urge to Finish" and the Fifteenth Entry in Roz's 2010 Fake Journal

Left: fifteenth entry in my 2010 Fake Journal. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

While today's post only brings you up to April 15 in my fake journal, earlier today I finished sketch 28. With only two days left of International Fake Journal Month 2010 I confess there is a mixture of feelings in my mind (I've written about the melancholy). Most prominent is a sort of sense of urgency to finish co-existing with a desire to not finish.

The urgency comes because I work so quickly in general. Also I tend to set fake journal parameters so that daily time commitment is low and therefore sustainable through the month of April.

Now on April 28, with only two days left there is an urge to "just finish." (It wouldn't take that long after all.)

Resisting that urge and keeping "honest" in the execution of the fake journal within the context of fake journaling, is one way in which I school myself in pacing and try to improve that characteristic in myself as I age. I feel as if I'm holding my breath, but I know, from past experience waiting, that there are new revelations and new insights if I wait and let the process unfold.

So I take a breath and put the pencil away, until tomorrow. And take up my real journal…

Another Fake Journal Keeper Joins the Ranks, and the Fourteeth Entry in Roz's 2010 Fake Journal

Left: the fourteenth entry in my 2010 fake journal. Click on the image to view an enlargement.


I have a link that I'm adding to the participant list: Gina Lento.

Go and check out her fake journal. She started on April 19 and has been experimenting with different media in a new brand of commercially bound journal—that's just the type of thing that lends itself to useful fake journaling. Keep going Gina.

Keep Working and Don't Care—and the Thirteenth Entry in Roz's 2010 Fake Journal

Left: the thirteenth entry in my 2010 fake journal. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

Only four more days of International Fake Journal Month 2010. Hang in there. Keep working.

If people don't understand what you are doing or if they don't like what you are doing in your fake journal, embrace the fact that you don't care!

And if you do care—well spend some time in the next four days thinking about the freedom of not caring, the freedom to create from your mind and heart to please yourself and no one else.

Look at your fake journal this way—a journal full of that which you were pleased to make. Just 'cause!

You can feel that way about your regular journal too. When you do, a whole new world of fun opens up for you. It's just play. It's not work. And you are engaging yourself, your creative mind. Take some of that freedom back with you to your regular journal—a gift from your fake journal author.

What To Do on May First, and the Twelfth Entry in Roz's 2010 Fake Journal

Left: the twelfth entry in my 2010 fake journal. Click on the image for an enlargement.

So far this is the only person the author of my fake journal has sketched more than once. I don't know if this will still be true five days from now.

Plan a journal outing on May 1—even it if is just a 10-minute coffee break in a lounge where you work. Sketch something. Write something true about your life. Decide how you are going to use your "fake journaling" time when April is over.

Little by little you have carved out a bit of time for your fake journal. This is time that you wanted for your creative project. May 1 is the time to remind yourself that you do have time in your life for your creative pursuits, no matter how busy you get. May 1 is the time to turn your fake journaling habit into a useful habit for your regular journaling. You've exercised your journaling muscles with cross training!

Eleventh Entry in Roz's 2010 Fake Journal

Left: my eleventh entry in my 2010 fake journal. Click on the image to view and enlargement.

This is one of my favorite sketches from this year's project. For me the eleventh day of April was a bit of a turn around. Definitely a day in which I had more clarity about the author of the journal (which I'll write about at the end of April).

For now, there are 6 more drawings, 6 more pages to do (I've finished today's entry). I'm already getting a little bit of a sense of, don't know what, melancholy is too strong a word, but a sense that I will miss the project when it's over. Things become habit when we do them daily over time. That habit happens quickly. It's great that journaling is such a helpful and healthy habit!

Have fun on these remaining days. Savor the moments.

Oh, and yes that's dried glue on the red paper at the spine. Isn't it wonderful! Fussy Roz doesn't have to worry about it at all because it's not her journal! Pure enjoyment.