Journals

I've decided to post a day early, seeing as how there appears to be some upcoming circumstances that might prevent me from posting during my usual time (Namely, that I'm going to be in Washington D.C for a week on a band trip. My next post will be an account of that adventure). Otherwise, things will be progressing according to schedule--the next chapter of Centaur Ranch is up, and I encourage you to read and offer comments on it.

For this week, I've decided to post something that I've been working on for so long, it doesn't even register as a project in my mind--my journals. Those who know me well are probably accustomed to the presence of one or more journals that I always carry around. Sometimes, they'll see me writing in them, other times consulting in them, and people will ask me if they're diaries. Yes, in a way.
I keep idea journals. They aren't accounts of my day-to-day activities. Rather, they're accounts of what's going on in my brain. I write down words or facts that strike me as interesting, random phrases that pop into my head, or even entire short stories or snippets of dialogue from full books. I make a point of never writing down full-length novels in them. I prefer them to be a jumble of ideas, both in writing and as drawings, that I can look back on later and use in other full books. A typical page may look something like this:

 The drawings aren't my best, and there's scribbles and corrections galore in the writing, but as a whole, I regard the journals as works of art.

                

                         So far, I've managed to fill two....

...And I have a third in reserve.

I owe my thanks to my cousin, for giving me the green one for Christmas two years ago, and to Poetic Earth Handcrafted Journals, from whom I bought the red and yellow journals at an art fair. My intention is to someday present these various sources with the filled journals, and declare to them, "Here. I fixed it."