Tips, Quotes, Ideas

On this morning’s walk, I photographed some “alien alphabets” –marks on the street left by the utility company. The name needs to change. In Arizona, “alien” is not a little green humanoid from outer space, it’s a slur for people not born here. On the same walk, I added other alphabet figures  based on shapes–gates, grates, tree limbs. No new name yet, but a lot of exploration ahead.

You probably have a file of quotes someplace on your computer. Me, too. I got a gift of a bunch of quotes from Traci Paxton Johnson, and added to it. Today, I noticed I had 27 pages of quotes. Printing them out (back and front of the pag, of course) and storing them in the studio for future use (I have that alphabet to try out) made sense. So did sharing some of the quotes that slid by on the screen on the way to the printer:

“Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.” –Japanese proverb

“Fear is the natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.” –Pema Chodron

“If you think you are too small to have an impact, try going to sleep with a mosquito in the room.” –14th Dalai Lama

“In the end, we remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” –Martin Luther King

“Patience is not about how long you can wait, but how well you behav while you’re waiting.” –Buddhist Bootcamp

Tip: If you live in a hot climate and have sliding doors, don’t grease them with oil. The heat degrades it and makes it stickier. And it collects cat hair.  Instead, rub the runners with plain candle wax. Works wonders.

Tip: Tired of drinking water all day long? Gather up some stray tea bags, brew them and make a blended ice tea. Choose a mix of fruit flavors and green tea–rose hips, hibiscus, mango, blackberry, and green tea. A great refreshing drink. No calories, lots of flavor, lots of antioxidants.

Tip: Have blank pages at the end of your journal? Fill them with an index–using page numbers or dated pages, so you can flip to the back and know what’s in each journal. Or use the back pages to test colors of new inks, paints, or pencils.

–Quinn McDonald is switching to summer hours, not because she likes getting up at 4:30 a.m., but because the sun rises early and so do the cats.

 

 

 

Journal Page: Inventing an Alphabet

OK, I’m a writer, so I like different alphabets and codes. They also make great additions to a journal page. A new alphabet, a code–it’s a clever journaling piece that adds an easy design element through writing.

Could be someone cheering.

This morning on my walk, I saw interesting writing on the street. My mind went to an interesting story line–what if visitors from another planet came down and took notes on the street on what they saw and learned? What I saw on the street would be a kind of alien journal, written in code. That idea appealed to me, and I took some photos of the “writing.”

Looks like it could be a back-to-back letter.

That idea led to another one: why just use the regular alphabet in your journal? Why not add some new ones? New letter shapes, new designs are all around you. You can use alchemy symbols,  the Greek alphabet, numerical symbols.

A really interesting one is the Mormon Deseret alphabet (below). When you use shapes from an alphabet, you can invent what they mean to you–what the letter shapes are going to mean in your world. You can translate interesting letters into whole words if you like.

My favorite of the street was the one below–this is definitely the answer to the meaning of life, the universe, and everything:

I made a journal page with a new alphabet. First I collaged various shades of white and cream on the page, then I used a brush and wrote quickly, without hesitation, inventing as I went along. And here is what the journal page looks like with a new alphabet:

And if you want to check out a few more different alphabets, this page should get you started.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer, and artist who makes things up as she goes along.

Book Review: Alternative Art Journals (And a Giveaway)

Winner:  The winner of the copy of Margaret Peot’s Alternative Art Journals is Lisa Brown–Congratulations, Lisa!

Title : Alternative At Journals: Explore Innovative Approaches to Collecting Your Creativity.
Author: Margaret Peot

Details: Published by North Light Books. Soft cover, 128 pages in eight chapters, plus a Gallery of Work, and further reading.

Contents: Traditional Sketchbooks, Collections Art Journals, Card Set Art Journals, Landscape Art Journals, Correspondence Art Journals, Box Art Journals, Faux Family Album Art Journals, Tag and Charm Art Journals.

What I Like: Right up front, I have to say I am a sucker for books that encourage people to bring out their inner artist, give ‘em a handful of art supplies and then let them feel successful with simple instructions that work well. And this is a book that does that. I love the breath of “simple” here.

Several times in the book, you get a bonus step-by-step demo on the artistnetwork.com website. Coptic book binding, bonus demonstrations, and if you sign up for the newsletter, there are additional downloads available.

The step-by-step photographs are large and clear and numbered with big, bold numbers.

The variety is big and interesting. The suggestions for alternatives are challenging so the book is suitable for beginners and advanced artists as well as those who like to flip through a book for ideas and head off on their own.

The book has a lot of tips, ideas, explanations. I am a huge fan of marginalia, and this book does a good job of it.

On technique uses white gouache as both a resist and as paint, and the instructions include washing ink off the page and allowing the sheets to dry by lining them around the walls of the bathtub. That photo alone made me want to plaster the walls of my tub with wet art. I tried the technique and found it worked well and gave great results.

What I Don’t Like: I had to think a long time to find something I didn’t like. Then I didn’t find one. The typeface is big enough and dark enough to read when you are in process of working. I’m guessing that not everyone will like the big variety of non-traditional projects–boxes and faux photo albums, round cards, charm journals and illustrated stones. I might not make all of them, but I’ll use ideas and adapt them. I’m also guessing that some people would want a more colorful book–I am a big fan of sepia, brown and cream tones, but some people will want brighter colors.

Disclosures: I received the book from a publicist for free. North Light Books is also my publisher.

GIVEAWAY: I’m giving away the book. Once more, I’m willing to spring for international postage. All you have to do is leave a comment that you want the book. I’ll draw the winner Friday night and put the announcement at the top of this post as well as on Saturday’s post.

–-Quinn McDonald is a writer and certified creativity coach who is writing a book on the inner critic.

Scraps on Your Journey

The Pawnee (a tribe of Native Americans living in Kansas and Oklahoma) have a legend about the meaning of life that I find both interesting and startling.

For years, I’ve studied origination myths–stories of how the world was formed, according to many religions, nations, and legends. I’m amazed at how many different stories there are, and how the stories have so many things in common.

Here is my recollection of the Pawnee legend:

The Journey. © Quinn McDonald, inks on paper. 2012 All rights reserved.

We must all walk our path. Each person’s path is different, but we must all walk on our own. We will cross other paths, and they may seem similar, but there is just one path for each person. We walk on it in the day, and we sleep on it at night. If we live to see the morning, we get up and continue walking. We cannot go backwards, we must always move ahead.

On the path, there are scraps of notes. These are experiences. Sometimes, we do not know what the experience means, but we must still live it, take that scrap and put it in our pocket. No scrap is too small. Even if the scrap has only a part of a letter on it, we must take it along.

There are times in our life, when we put all the notes together and look at the whole it makes. Maybe we understand what we read, maybe we have part of a map, maybe we suddenly see where we are going. That is the wisdom of experience.

There can be many understandings along the way, but there will always be more scraps, more notes, more experiences. We live life, and life also lives us.

When we understand what the Great Creator wants of us, when we do what we are born to do, we stop longing to be on another path and walk our own in peace.

* * *
I love this story, because it tells the story of keeping a journal, of making meaning through writing and art–the way we take notes about our life.

-–Quinn McDonald is a note taker. She crosses paths with other meaning-makers, and spends time asking questions about their journey. In this way, she is a creativity coach.

Journal, Journey

The words “journal” and “journey” have their roots in the same Latin word-–diurnus,  “of the day.” Each day we travel along our life, and yes, inevitably toward our death. I know that’s unpopular to say, but it’s what makes paying attention important.

Storm cloud, seen from airplane. © Quinn McDonald. All rights reserved. 2012

Each day is a series of moments, and then the sun sets, and the day is over. We can’t get it back. We can’t live it over. It is written in permanent ink. Each day molds us, changes us, makes us more experienced and older. Each day we become stronger in some ways, weaker in others. It’s never the same day.

So when someone asks me if I write in my journal every single day, with a slight hint of fear over the chore and obligation,  I reply, “Yes, if I’m lucky.”

—Quinn McDonald is a creativity coach. She is a journalist of her own journey.

 

What Else Do I Write in My Journal?

You’ve gotten a prompt a day email for the last two years. You write about that every day. You are getting a little bored. You’ve written morning pages. You’ve written lists. Now what?

We fall in love with journals because they are filled with hope and potential. With how they look, with heavy leather bindings and wraps.  We bring them home, write on the first page, and then store them on the shelf. We become scared of our journals because they are empty, and to fill them means writing every day.

You do not have to write in your journal every day. You may want to, and then you may not. If you want to make a habit of writing, you should push yourself (gently) to write every day. Writing every day makes you better at writing every day. When you have written every day for a month, you can decide how often you want to write. It takes a month to break in a new habit.

But what should you write about? Journal pages are a way of thinking out loud–and often not in words. Journals help you create your outlook on life, they are the GPS system of your soul. Write what is important today. The price of a gallon of milk. About your car and what it feels like to drive it. Tomorrow it may be something different–which do you prefer, cotton shirts or those “high performance” ones?

When I was in graduate school, I read the journals of hundreds of women who had come to this country. These women came with very little in the way of possessions but carried a lot of traditions and new ideas. Many of the women were poor and overworked. But they wrote. Writing was their way out of their physical reality into a better world. And once they wrote about that better world, they created it.

Journal page by Patty Van Dorine

In those journals lived the culture and the history of their day. They were not famous writers, they were women who worked or stayed at home with children. They took in washing. They wrote at night. In those journals I found the cost of a pair of children’s shoes in 1895, and a dozen eggs in 1897,  and a pencil.

In those journals I found out what women thought about politics, and religion, and their bodies and the clothes they wore. I read as they changed their minds and the way they celebrated events that were important to them.

I read the journals of the women pioneers who walked behind covered wagons in the 1850s and 60s. They did not think of themselves as brave or changers of history. They were scared and tired. They wrote about the sounds they heard at night, and about the joy they would feel when they slept in a real bed.

What each of these journals had in common was a reality described in great detail. The pages contained the smells and tastes of a dinner, the sight of a field of waving grass, the sound of a tired sigh, the touch of hair and skin. The pages were full of history and culture.

The only thing you need to write in a journal is curiosity. What is happening? What do you feel about it? Discover yourself in your journal. Date the pages, so you will know how you and your world changed as you wrote it down.

–Quinn McDonald is a journaler and a certified creativity coach.

Pencil Beats Disk

I love pencils. Cheap, available, usable. I have a pencil on my nightstand next to some index cards–in case I wake up and need to remember something but don’t want to turn on the light. A pencil always works. In the dark, without looking, the pencil will work. Ballpoints and fountain pens, which I also love, sneakily need to be warmed up and I don’t know when they’ve started working.

Yellow pencil. Colored pencil, ink. © Q. McDonald

The other night, I wanted to remind myself to take the white board to a workshop. I used a ballpoint pen (the cat had absconded with the pencil to blissfully chew the eraser to bits) and the next morning I read “uh tc bca d”because missing halves of letters looked like different letters–half of a W turned into a U, the O into a C.

When I got to the journaling workshop, I was asked the most popular question I get–why not just blog? Why not keep a journal on your computer? I love tech toys.

But I also have a shoebox full of diskettes in various sizes that no one can open and read. Some are in word-processing programs that pre-date MS Word or Wordperfect. Anyone remember Multi-Mate? Of course not. Some are on formats for which there are no matching slots in computers. The big 5.5-inch floppies. Punch cards. Those computers are long gone.

Lascaux cave drawing, hunt scene

It’s true that I lost a pile of journals to a flood in the basement, and to another to a fire in the attic. (Ah, the Old-Testament years.) But in each case, the journals I found were still readable. For that matter, so are the drawings in the Caves at Lascaux, which are about 30,000 years old and made with charcoal, an early pencil-substitute.

My son’s first drawings, love notes I scribbled, my parents notes to each other (my father favored light poetry directions and directives to my mother), in fact, my father’s sketches from when he was 6 years old–over a hundred years ago–are all still intact because they are in this simple medium. Pencil on paper. Timeless.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer who uses pencils, pens, computers, and inks to make meaning. Anyway she can. She’s also a creativity coach.

Forget It? Remember It! Journaling Does Both

Writing to Remember
If you keep a journal, you fill pages with detailed memories and ephemera to remember events or people. You had a wonderful reunion with a friend. You write it down so you’ll  remember that evening years from now. In your journal are all the details, ready to replay in your imagination long after your memory records it as fuzzy.

Writing holds your emotions and memories, it heals and creates.

 Writing to Forget
Pouring emotions on paper lets you release it. Have a disagreement with a friend? Pour your feelings out in your journal, and you will leave them there, because there is no reason for you to want to hold on to the hurt. Writing is an act of healing, and the healing begins when you release the need to rehearse the pain over and over again to make sure it’s still there. Knowing it’s in your journal is reason enough to quit rehearsing the details.

How can journal writing do both?
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 while you are writing. Writing by hand slows down your thoughts and helps you concentrate. (Some recent studies have shown that people who have learned to use a keyboard at an early age may get the same release from typing.)

Writing helps you forget, because you can vent on the page, examine your motives and reactions, and decide what to take with you as you move on. You learn from your hurts, as long as you don’t nurture them to feed anger and thoughts of retribution.

In the same way, writing down a to-do list allows you to forget, because you have the items written down. No need to keep rehearsing the list in your mind. Keeping a to-do list reduces anxiety and feeling overwhelmed because you no longer repeat what you haven’t done yet over and over.

When you write down to remember, something different happens.  You write to enforce a memory, to recall more details, to bring a full range of emotions to the top of your mind. As you feel an enjoyable emotion or physical pleasure, the words you write create a path to feel that pleasure again, in full measure.

Keeping a journal is both a creative act and and act of healing. It can do both at the same time. Visit your journal often and allow your creativity to fuel healing.

—Quinn McDonald keeps a journal. She helps people learn how in her book Raw Art Journaling, Making Meaning, Making Art.

Building on the Past

Almost no one I talk to had a happy childhood. We mourn our past as the present trickles by. We want to live it over, do it better, get the mom or dad we really needed.

We can't re-write the past.

What we are doing, of course, is using our adult selves to direct what we should have had as kids. What would happen if you asked yourself, “What would I be today if I had the childhood I so badly needed?” Maybe you did have the childhood you needed then to become the person you are today.  You are you because of your past. You learned lessons you could not have learned had you had that ideal childhood. What did you learn? Maybe it was patience, self-discipline, discernment, independence, self-reliance, or determination. Maybe you learned how to survive. Not a bad skill.

When we treat our past like a swamp, we stoke it until it takes over our present, eating at us, whining at us to blame everyone who didn’t reach out. No doubt they should have, but they didn’t. And tomorrow, they still didn’t. And meanwhile, you are missing out on today’s life.

As we go through the days, mourning our past, we rip each day off the calendar and trample it beneath our feet. The calendar hanging on the wall gets thinner and thinner, as our days get fewer. We still grind each day beneath our feet, treading it into the past that does not change.

What if we handled that calendar page differently? What if we wrote on it–across the big numbers, around the margins, filling it with what we accomplished, how we moved forward, how we celebrate our skills? Then take the calendar page and tuck it back into the end of the calendar.

As the days run on, instead of the proof of loss under your feet, you have a record of what you have created, what you have made. The calender is a bit wobbly with all those loose pages, but it stays full and stuffed with facts, growth, with reminders of how far we have come.

We cannot change the past, but we can change how we see it. We can use it as rich ground to grow our future. Our lives can be the journals that track our steady movement ahead. To become the people we always wanted to be.

–Quinn McDonald is a journaler of  life. She did not have a happy childhood, but she is having a hell of a time now. She’s the author of Raw Art Journaling, Making Meaning, Making Art.