By Guest Author: Joanna Campbell Slan
Visit her website at Scrapbook Storytelling!

More of this Feature • Part 1: Doing the Splits • Part 2: How to Divide and Conquer

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Let's go through the steps of the pre-writing process:

• Collect your information. Carry a Tyvek envelope with you on trips. (Tyvek is that indestructible material they use to make mailing envelopes. If you pick up these envelopes from the post office where they are free for priority mail use, you could also mail them home if you get overloaded.) Toss in memorabilia such as brochures, postcards, ticket stubs and so on. Debbie Mock from Memory Makers magazine also slips receipts into smaller envelopes in date order. Re-tracing her steps is made easier by checking the places and dates on the receipts. If you are confused about where you were on Monday, and you know the date, a look at the restaurant receipt may bring the whole day back into focus for you. One problem with this: When I looked at my receipts from Egypt, they didn't do me much good because I couldn't read the language. You might want to jot a note on the receipt as you tuck it away-in your language or one you can decipher!
• File your information. Files that work for me include topics like pets, family, parenting, kids, poems, sports, and trips. You'll be amazed at what you'll find in the newspapers and magazines when you start to look. Cool quotations, cartoons, art, facts, and studies all help round out your journaling. So, when I found the perfect poem about parenting, I tucked it in to a file and used it as the basis of pages to explore my relationship with my son. A photo of a doll cake reminded me of cakes my grandmother used to make for us. A cartoon with a plaintive dog will give me art to copy on my light table to illustrate "Who let the dog out?" the chant we hear at all the Rams games.
• Sort your information. Use page protectors to sort your collected information. When I have the photos developed, I throw the ones I want into a page protector, along with paper, embellishments, and then pull the information I've collected. (Sometimes the information comes after the photos, and then there's little need for filing because everything goes in a page protector.) Having all my pieces in one place makes getting started on pages easier.
• Make notes as you work on the page. Scribble them on a scrap of paper that you can tuck in your page protector. Often as you work with memorabilia and photos, old memories resurface. That information surfaced at a key moment, and you want to keep it with the material that triggered it.
• Create your page layout, leaving room for SOFJ.
• Sit down and write. Typically, I'll have four to six layouts done when I sit down to write up the journaling. Because I always compose on computer, I simply stack up the pages and write my journaling for each one. I print out rough copies on regular computer paper. I compare the print outs to the spacing on the page. Then, I adjust for margins, color or spacing. When I'm happy with my results, I print out the journaling on archival paper. Because I'm writing for many pages at once, I waste very little paper. Often I can put two or three journaling blocks on one sheet of archival paper. With that in mind, I group together the journaling that will go on cream colored paper and separate it from the journaling that will go on white paper. If you don't want to use your computer generated journaling boxes, you can still use your computer to compose your journaling. Afterwards, hand letter your journaling onto the page in the space you've saved.

A FEW FINAL WORDS

I wouldn't be honest if I didn't admit that journaling takes effort. I write for a living, and some days I sit down to journal and think, "This is like eating my vegetables. I'd rather be eating dessert, thank you." That said, today I ran across an old handout I'd written for a journaling class. The handout included a humorous anecdote about my son-an anecdote I'd totally forgotten. I marveled at the story and thought, "Thank goodness I wrote this down!"

Yes, writing family stories can take time and energy. But so does everything worthwhile in life. As time passes, you'll return to the pages you made with complete journaling on them and recognize how precious they are. After all, it's the stories about your family that make your pages unique. Without our stories, we just have photo albums. For most of us, our goal was memory albums, and those demand a little more of our time and effort.

BIO: Joanna Campbell Slan is the author of the Scrapbook Storytelling book series which includes Scrapbook Storytelling and the only step-by-step full color scrapbooking books Storytelling with Rubber Stamps, Quick and Easy Pages and One Minute Journaling (available in April, 2001). Joanna is also the author of the guided journaling book, I'm Too Blessed to be Depressed. Sign up to receive Joanna's StoryStarters every month at www.scrapbookstorytelling.com

Materials Used In Layout Sample Above:
PURE GOLD PAT -- Here I used my homemade cauldron again with yellow inks. This layout features Greeking. Notice how the Greeking tells you visually how your completed journaling will look on the page. There's no guess work about the visual density when you use this method of S.O.F.J. I used a Frances Meyer lettering template and brushed gold ink around the letters. The background paper is by KMA, as is the gingham. The clover punch is by McGill, and the coins in the pot are cut from Hygloss paper with Paper Adventures scissors. I had inked some white paper green for another project, so I used it for the clover and the grass which I cut free hand.
Created by Joanna Campbell Slan