the scrapbook as journal

I didn't actual go where I was originally aiming with the last blog on scrapbooking, and I ended up changing the title to fit. This time, I'm hoping to keep the title where it's at since I got all that background out of the way. Part of what I intended was the bit on Biomes - capturing images of my story settings as a guide for writing and revising and to share with readers the sources of my inspiration if I could offer it to them in some medium. But more, it was my image of a scrapbook that captured me in something more visual than words.

My journal is already something of a classic scrapbook, with a few ticket stubs, comic and newspaper clip-outs to which I've added comments or help me capture the themes and focus of the day, even a few stickers, though not typically the type used in modern "scrap books" that have everything but actual scraps in them. But I've had dreams of something more visual than that. For example, last night I envisioned a three-D picture that I might capture as a somewhat less 3-D scrapbook page: a thousand printed words cut out and carefully selected, then a bunch of them pushed aside to open space for "a few more words". It would, at the least, convey my interest in words (and it's something you can't do with he words on a Kindle or Nook, that tactile sense of book, pages, and words with physical as well as mental texture. (I'm one of those people that wants to finger all the pieces of a kit rather than just study the diagrams in the instructions; I want to feel the keyboard, not see where the letters are).

I envision a scrap book that has pages that express me, express parts of my life (hence the shift in the last blog off into art) like a journal more than like a photo album. Because I write, it would have pages reflective of writing, maybe some calligraphy and a little painting, but also the content of the stories (hence the ultimate connection to biomes that I was actually aiming for). I might find a science-and -technology sort of catalog to capture the essence of my science fiction writing, along with a few sketches and just a few words or space ship posters and space program headlines. I might have a page of family (though most will land in a whole scrapbook of their own before I get as far as a journal scrapbook). It might have a page or two representative of all the places I've been.

Scrap-book as journal is easier to share, more quickly scanned, and less deeply understood (perhaps just as well--see that other aspect of sharing, the giving instead of the viewing, less easy, often to the point of prevention for some, lacking in confidence or too often too harsh a response to what they have boldly revealed). It can be more akin to art in that regard (I see the careful, decorate pages around one or two pictures not so much art as elaborate framing, whereas my full page collages are like those simplest of frames, relying primarily on some edge that might remain uncovered, or on the journal cover as the only frame, capturing the whole but less so the individual pages and their contents, much like a written journal, especially one with little or no margin to the page.

Scrapbook journal, though, like all scrapbooking, is harder to fill than the written page, in its way. When I write, I select, but it is a selection of thought and sequence, not boundaries. I don't use a daily diary with sizes and dates but a large notebook and an entry might be half a page or many, then end and the beginning less defined than on a scrapbook page, whose edges aren't readily crossed. And my words are whatever I select, limited only by my knowledge, creativity and cursive skills. For scrapbooking, unless it is to be a sketchbook, it depends on the materials at hand, the physical limits of each picture or sticker or clipping, the selection gathered at stores or from magazines and photographic efforts of the past. This is a vastly different selection process and editing and revision is best done on the spot, before the tape or glue or stickers set and revision becomes destruction with no replacement supplies.

It will come in time, I think, but for now, it is an exercise mostly of the mind, unless as I create my trip scrapbooks, I set aside one eah for my journal, or spend a few extra minutes with the scraps to place a few visual "notes" on a "journal" page.