What do I do with my journal?

Are you afraid that someone will find out your journal secrets? That when you die your life will be there for all to see? If this is keeping you from writing in a journal, could you reconsider? There are steps you can take to protect your privacy, and some things to think about before you cut off your connection to the past.

If you feel strongly that your privacy not be invaded, you can rent a safe deposit box at a bank. Put your completed journals in this safe deposit box and give the key to a trusted friend.

Julia Cameron, the author of “The Artist’s Way,” and the proponent of writing three pages of whatever you are thinking every single morning was asked at a book signing if she keeps her journals. She said she did, they fill a storage locker. She has an agreement with her daughter, her executor, that she be cremated. “But first, burn the books. Then burn me!” Cameron said.

Before you choose to keep your life such a secret, let me encourage you to let go. Once you are dead your past is not going to haunt you. And it might help others. My mother’s life was a mystery to me. I was born late in her life and only knew her as angry and manipulative. Sure, she had bright moments, but they were short and quickly dispensed with.

After her death, I found a packet of love letters she and my father had exchanged. So strong was her hold over me, even from the grave, that I seriously considered destroying the letters, unopened. When I read through them, another woman emerged. One I had never known. A young woman, the woman who was the mother to my brothers. She seemed eager to live her life. I never found out what had shut her down, although she had many reasons.

Without those letters, I would have never had a chance to see this other person. This person with hope and humor. This woman who suddenly had more in common with me than I ever believed. It was a generous gift to discover.  I’m sure she would have hated my prying into her past, but now that I know, it is also easier for me to be easier on her.

Before you lock up your past, think about the help you might be. That event you are ashamed of might help someone else, might change their mind, might leave a word of encouragement. Once you are gone, your life in this world is complete. Leave some clues for the next generation. You might create a picture of yourselves for people who are not even born. Give them a view into your life, and into the status of life in a time period they never knew.

–Quinn McDonald is a certified creativity coach who teaches journal writing. See her work at QuinnCreative.com You can also read about Raw Art Journaling for journal writers who can’t draw.

How to Make it Stick

For all artists, crafters, or just people who need to know how to glue two items together, there is a website for you: thistothat.com

The homepage gives you two boxes to choose the two items you are trying to glue together. Click Submit, and it gives you the best glue for the materials.

There is also a page for trivia that includes items like:

” When you are sucking in all the toxins from your cigarette, you can rest assured that the glue used to hold it together is completely non-toxic. It is made from a combination of casein (milk) and wax (to increase moisture resistance), and is absolutely harmless.” or

” Cellulose, the major ingredient of the cell walls of plants, is the base of adhesives ideal for sticking plastic or glass to the cornea of the eye. Methyl Cellulose does not irritate human tissue, which is why it is used for this application.”

No wonder I use methyl cellulose for collages and cards–it’s easy and doesn’t pull of my skin.

Glue Tip for Cactus Owners: If you’ve touched a cactus and have dozens of no-see-um stickers in your finger, coat it with a white glue (Elmer’s is fine, any kind of PVA will do. Do not use super-glue) and let it dry. Then carefully, slowly peel it off starting at one edge. The glue will pull out all the cactus spines.

–Quinn McDonald is an Raw Art Journal artist who sticks up for original artwork, with and without glue. See her work at QuinnCreative.com (c) 2008-9 All rights reserved. Image: northumberlandglue.uk

Journals: Write to Forget, Write to Remember

Most journal keepers write entries to remember events or people. You had a wonderful evening. You write it down so you’ll never forget. And when you need to know, it’s there. You keep track of books and movies you love, make lists of MP3s you want to buy, and the list is there to work with when you need it.

There is another side to journal-keeping: Writing to Forget

Above and Below, (c) Quinn McDonald

Journal-keeping is wonderfully healing. You write down your anger, and your anger stays on the page. You write down the detailed background of how you got hurt, and the hurt is eased. Journal writing helps you forget, move on, forgive, ease up. On others, on yourself.

How can writing help you both remember and forget? Writing is a creative activity, and the act of forming words carefully, with a pen, creates a reaction between your brain and hand that lets you think through the emotional impact and deal with it. I’m not sure it works the same way on a keyboard, it may.

Writing helps you forget, because you can vent on the page, have an emotional reaction, examine your (and the other person’s) motives, and move on. You decide what to take with you as you move on.

When you write down to remember, something similar happens. (List making is different, it records items.) You vent in a different manner, and take a different set of memories with you.

Journal prompt: What can you let go of that you no longer need to remember?

–Quinn McDonald is a writer and creativity coach. She as a website describing her business side at QuinnCreative. Her other website, Raw-Art-Journals, is about her art life.

Follow Quinn on Twitter.

–(c) Quinn McDonald, 2009. All rights reserved. Image:“Above and Below,” colored pencil and ink on paper. Words on image:  “The road behind us is so clear. We judge every wrong turn. The road ahead is unmarked, we have to guess which turn to take.”

Words? Content. Images? Context

Although it’s meant as personal art, raw art journaling also has practical purposes. It can be used in keeping notes so people understand them better (often called by the biz.jargon name visual facilitation). The reason raw art works–both personally and professionally–is that we process and understand ideas using our left brains, and understand emotionally using our right brain. Full brain understanding with content and context.PowerPoint, originally designed to allow engineers to talk to marketing, is an example of the result of increasing content and reduced context. Endless bullet points instead of simple images is death by PowerPoint. Add emotional understanding through images and you not only “get it,” you keep it gotten. As it were.If you just heard this as a presentation, you’d still be guessing. But animation and images, and. . . .you understand it.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer and creativity coach. She as a website describing her business side at QuinnCreative.

Her other website, Raw-Art-Journals, is about her art life. Follow Quinn on Twitter.

more about “The Crisis of Credit Visualized on Vimeo“, posted with vodpod

Cube Timer: Cool Business Tool

My favorite business tool is a timer. I use it when I’m on the phone with coaching clients to warn me that I have another call coming up. I use it when I’m Tweeting or on Facebook to make sure I don’t look up to see the sun set after only “a few minutes” online that started at dawn.

cube timer set for 30-minutes

I use a timer to remind me when the wash is done, let me meditate without keeping en eye on the clock, alert me when my free-writing time is up, when the hose needs to be moved from the orange to the lemon tree, when to check on the lemon cake while I’m writing.

A timer relieves you of guilt that your mind can’t be alert on all fronts at the same time,  and helps you get there. There is a timer that hangs on the fridge, and it needs to stay there because I don’t want magnets near the computer or iPhone. It’s the fifth fridge timer, and none of them have worked the same way. Usually, I have to pull the batteries out to turn it off, because the instructions are incomprehensible. I can’t hear it from my office. There’s a timer on my iPhone–so clever–but once I set it, I forget the extra step of turning it on.

Cube timer turned offextra step of turning it on.

Now I have my cube timer. It’s a white cube, 2 inches square. It has 4 pre-set times: 5-,  15-,  30- and 60 minutes, one on each side. It also has a zero and a side with an on switch.

You turn it on, and flip it so the time you want shows on top. It beeps once to show it’s on. A red light blinks to let you know it’s working.  A count-down timer is on the side with the on switch. It beeps when the time’s up, and you flip it to zero to turn it off. You can turn the switch to “off” to save battery life.

It’s the easiest timer I’ve ever had. Available from Solutions.com. And no, they didn’t pay me to say this.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer and creativity coach. She teaches people how to keep a raw-art-journal, an art journal with your own private symbols.

Words Make Art

When you are in love with words, they become art. Writing, journaling, typography–it’s all part of the art. I ran across an interesting website today: wordle.net It takes copy you supply it (or it will scan your blog or website) and creates a typographic layout. You can change the colors, fonts, vertical or horizontal layout.

Best of all, you own the images. You have to credit wordle.net, but you can use them in almost anyway you want. Images created by the Wordle.net web application are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Here is one I made using Jane Greer’s poem, The Hunter.

Wordle does The Hunter

Here’s a vertical, pastel sample using a recent blog post:

Wordle using random blog

Here’s a horizontal one, using the words on the home page of my website, Raw Art Journals:

Raw art journal Wordle

It’s a lot of fun. But before you go, set a timer. Time flies when you are having fun.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer and creativity coach. See her work at QuinnCreative and Raw-Art-Journals.  Her other website, Raw-Art-Journals, is about her art life. Follow Quinn on Twitter.

The Wide World of Book Art

Having just launched a new site on raw art journaling, and feeling like I have a new pet (unhousebroken and with a voracious appetite), I dived into the web to see what people are doing with books.

A lot, it seems.

(c) Vladimir Kush's Atlas of Wander

Vadimir Kush is a painter. His remarkable transformation of a tree into a book is Atlas of Wander. (Shown small, at left). It represents both the power of books, as well as the tree from which most of their paper comes from. To say nothing of the transformative nature of reading.

At the Website Dark Roasted Blend, there’s a two-parter about altered books. Part I was interesting; I was especially interested in the code-like writing in one of the books. In Part II, she shares some amazing images of cut-up, re-shaped books. If you cringe at altering books, this site will amaze you. Jacqueline Rush Lee is turning books back into trees, I swear!

Cara Barer poses books to look like new life, then photograph them so we can enjoy that new life. These airy, curvey, sculptures make you glad you own books.

Because, quite frankly, there are times I feel like the last person on earth to love books for their own sake. I decorate my house with books, they are piled around my desk, I own five library cards and use the most recent one cheerfully and often.

When I launched raw art journals, I wondered if anyone would care. More people than I thought, to my great joy.

I’m a writer, but Georgia Russel is an artist who uses a scalpel the way most artists

Le Voleur de Souffle, (c) Georgia Russell

weild a brush or pencil. Her constructions take books, photographs, and musical scores, as well as maps and currency, and makes them into something so different, so sculputrually aesthetic, it takes your breath away. To the right is Le Voleur de Souffle, (Translation: The Thief of Breath), a cut book jacket in an acrylic case, 14 x 9 x 4 inches.

There are days I hate the whole world of technology and all the evil things it has spawned that don’t work, disappear, have to be rebooted. Today was not one of those days. Today, technology brought the world of art books into my grasp, and I am grateful.

—Quinn McDonald is a writer and certified creativity coach.

Raw Art Journals launch

For years, I’ve been playing with the idea that everyone can draw. Maybe not a perfect portrait or a watercolor, but draw something meaningful. I’m not an illustrator, either, but put me in a meeting and I’ll fill up the page with symbols and doodles. In fact, when I take notes, I use a lot of symbols.

Raw-art-journals is the website I developed for those who can’t draw, but would like to keep an art journal.

The Idea (c) Quinn McDonald, 2009

Well, now there’s an idea. Suppose you could develop symbols that were meaningful to you? Suppose that you could use existing symbols–including numbers and letters–and create interesting pages in your journal? Well, you can.

Those symbols, doodles, sketches and abstract art pieces in your journal is raw art journaling. The ideas are yours, and you don’t need anything fancy to create it. A pencil or pen, eraser, and good paper, and you’re off!

The one on the left is my idea or raw art journaling. It combines an exclamation mark, a lightbub shape (for the idea) and a plant (made out of journal pages), and you have my symbol for a raw art journal.

I’m a word person, so I add words to a lot of my designs. In the one below, it says, “Writing helps me untangle my thoughts–or learn to love them all tangled.” One sentence journaling at its

Untangled (c) Quinn McDonald

best–and a fun way to express myself. Sure, you could do it in colored pencil, and I have done that, too.

Stop by and start your raw art journal, too!

–-Quinn McDonald is a writer and creativity coach. She’s going to have workshops on raw art journals, too.

Her other website, Raw-Art-Journals, is about her art life. Follow Quinn on Twitter.

Fixing the Messed-Up Journal Page

You’re working in your journal and one of the pages doesn’t work out. You don’t want it to mess up the rest of the journal, so now what? You’ll know what I’ll say first–that your journal is not a piece of perfection, that some pages will work out better than others. And I’ll know your reply–tell me how to make it work. Here are some ways to fix a journal page that didn’t work out:

Image: www.show.me.uk

1.Cut it out. Trim the page out about an inch from the spine stitching. Put a sturdy piece of cardboard or a cutting mat under the page and cut with an art knife. You’ll get a better cut than with scissors. You now have a stub left in the book. You can attach another page here. Complete the page first, so you know it’s exactly what you want in this part of your journal. Attach with tape or glue.

If you use glue, you’ll want the stub to be on the back of the insert. Put the glue on the stub, after putting a protective page underneath the stub. No sense gluing pages of your journal together.

2. Take notes. If there is room enough on the page, make notes about what you would do differently the next time. This helps you feel better about the mistake. It also helps you learn how to avoid repeating the mistake. If there is not enough room on the page, cut out small rectangles of paper, make your comments on them, and glue them into place on the page you don’t like.

3. Cover it up. There are thin papers that will hide the work, but translucent enough to add interest. Parchment or tracing paper, and some kinds of washi–rice paper–do a good job. You can also add a piece of transparency film or mylar. Transparency can be colored by running it through your printer to put a colored image on it. (Make sure your printer will take transparency film first.) Transparency film can also be dyed or stamped with alcohol inks. Mylar can be tinted with colored pencils or inks.

4. Paint over it. If you don’t mind a thicker page, cover the page with collage or paint. If you are going to paint, use a heavy body acrylic or gesso to start. You’ll get muc better coverage than watercolor or thin acrylics. You can also cover portions with masking tape and paint over the rest of it. Collage works well because you won’t be able to write on paint very easily.

Your inner perfectionist should find one of those methods the right way to keep loving your journal.

–Quinn McDonald is a journal writer and creativity coach.

Her other website, Raw-Art-Journals, is about her art life. Follow Quinn on Twitter.

Navigating Twitter

Last time, I gave a quick overview of Twitter. This time, let’s see how to use it.

If you have an account (you can sign up at twitter.com) you can post and answer other’s posts.

The best way to get attention is to post useful links or facts, along with a link to those facts. Sure you can post something like “In a Major League Ball Game, the home team has to have 90 new balls available for the game,” but the statement is more effective if you post a link proving your statement. Most links are long, so you can go to tinyurl.com and type in the long link, and instantly get a much shorter link. That’s important when your post can’t be more than 140 characters long.

The idea on Twitter is to “follow” people–read their posts. And have them follow you.

Who to follow? Depends on what your interests are. There is a search engine on the Home page, and you can type in any topic to see what people have to say about it.

You can organize all your social media and search and connect through TweetDeck.com

You can find out who is no longer following you and un-follow them with Twitoria.

Kristine Wirth explains a lot of Twitter very well. When you use Twitter you’ll see this symbol a lot: # It’s called a hashmark and it works the same way as tags on WordPress.  Here’s how Kristine explains it:

“The hash mark (#) before a word in a post allows you to tag that post for that word. However, in order to get tracked via a hash tag, you need to opt-in and follow http://twitter.com/hashtags.  Once you’re following Hashtags, every time you make a post in Twitter and tag it with a hash mark like so:  #iPhone, it will then show up as a real-time post on http://www.Hashtags.org.

If you then visit Hashtags.org, you can click on any tag and it will show you all of the posts that have been tagged with that keyword.”

Some other notations, courtesy of AdventCreative’s Marshall Thompson:

@ = Placing this before a person’s Twitter name (i.e. @sethjenks) is an open conversation directed toward that person. Anybody can see this communication between you and the person your @ing.  You can @ anybody on Twitter, even people who are not following your updates.

D = A private conversation between you and a person who is following your updates. There is a space between the ‘d’ and the person’s name and you don’t need to use the @ sign. You can only direct message people who are following you.

RT = Re-tweeting means, Sweet! I like this! Passing it along. Always give props to the original tweeter.

Some people I follow also have blogs worth reading:

Maria Schneider is helpful and concise. She’ll tell you how to use the 60/40 rule on Twitter  as well as how to get street, or maybe it’s Tweetcred. Schneider also has tips on good follows for writers.

Liz Massey, over at Creative Liberty, writes on creativity, but she also is techno-savvy. Check out posts on her site for great ideas on social networking. One of my favorite of her posts is information on creating a creative dashboard.

That should help, I hope. Have fun Tweeting!

Follow me on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/QuinnCreative

–Quinn McDonald is a life and creativity coach who owns QuinnCreative.