This month (August 2001) marks the first full year of The Journal Newsletter!

This month The Journal’s newsletter gets a bit esoteric and hobbyist with a new article about how I use The Journal for use in Role-Playing Games (RPGs). I have been playing RPGs since 1989, when I was in college. While The Journal wasn’t originally intended as “RPG Support Software”, it does have a number of features that can be helpful when preparing adventures and organizing your campaign. We also have more writing and journaling exercises, as well as a new tip for using The Journal.

This month we have an article from Stefanie A. Newton, entitled “Thanks for the Memories.” Ms. Newton discusses ways to encourage our parents and grandparents to write down their stories and memories. As always, we have some new writing exercises, and a new “tip” to help you get the most out of The Journal.

The TIPS & TRICKS section talks about AllChars, a freeware program that could be useful to users of The Journal, and we have some new WRITING EXERCISES. There is no HOW I USE THE JOURNAL article for this month, but I have included an article of my own called “Keeping a Professional Journal”.

This month’s “How I Use The Journal” article by Kent Eaton focuses on how he uses The Journal in “alternative learning.” Since my wife & I are homeschooling our son, I was particularly interested in this. If anyone else has an education-related journaling theme they want to write about, I would love to hear from you. Susan is back with another couple of writing exercises, and I present a short explanation of the useful-but-obscure “Paste Special” in the Tips & Tricks section.

I give a short description of how I organize my information about The Journal. Pete Hollyer presents another detailed usage tip for The Journal, this time focusing on entry links. Neal Hallford, noted computer game-designer and author of an upcoming book on computer game design has submitted a “guest writing exercise.” Plus, Michael Boyter, author of the e-Book “The MemoryGrabber”, has written an article about “journaling for tomorrow”, so be sure to check those out.

We have a new “How I Use The Journal” from Dawn Murphy, and an article from journaling enthusiast Julie Wrigley Smith called “Why Keep a Personal Journal”. Plus we have our usual writing exercises and other features.

To start off 2001 we have a new “How I Use The Journal” feature from Allen Johnson, describing how he organizes his novel-in-development, as well as new Tips & Tricks and Writing Exercises.

Thanksgiving holiday preparations and other projects managed to delay this month’s newsletter by a bit. Sorry about that. I’ll make an effort to have the December newsletter out before Christmas.

This month we have our first user-submitted Tips & Tricks article. Pete Hollyer explains how he uses template entries for tracking automobile maintenance and repairs. Pete also contributed his template entries, and those will be available for download.