The Journal Newsletter
Introduction
Welcome to November 2007!
November is National Novel Writing Month! Good luck to all of you that are participating this year. I’m participating this year, my second time. My own Nano novel passed the 25,000 word mark today, so I’m excited about that. And, yes, I’m using The Journal. 🙂
The Journal 4.1 Build #241 was released last month, just after the newsletter went out. If you haven’t picked up that update yet, you can see what’s been fixed here:
Version History
Thank you for using DavidRM Software’s The Journal!
Tips & Tricks
TIP: Word Counting
If you’ve done much writing, either for yourself or for school or for pay, you’ve probably needed to know who many words you’ve written. The Journal has 2 commands for counting words, both of them on the “Tools”menu.
Word Count (hot-key: Ctrl+W)
This command counts the total number of words in the active entry. It also counts the number of characters (with and without spaces), the number of paragraphs, and the number of lines displayed on the screen.
Word Count Selection (hot-key: Ctrl+Shift+W)
“Word Count Selection” tallies the words, characters, paragraphs and lines of the currently selected text.
This command can be useful for seeing how many words you’ve written in the last few paragraphs or in a particular block of text within an entry.
In addition to word counting, The Journal also tracks certain statistics for every entry:
- Date Created – the date the entry was originally created.
- Date Last Modified – the date of the last modification to the entry.
- Date Last Printed – when the entry was last printed.
- Total Editing Time – the number of minutes spent editing the entry (this is measured as the time from beginning an addition/modification to the time the entry was saved).
- Revision Number – the number of times the entry has been modified (all changes on a single date count as a single revision).
This information can be viewed for the active entry by clicking on the“Entry” menu and choosing “Entry Statistics…”
Writing Prompts
Free Writing Prompt – Write for 20 minutes using the following as your starter: “Thank you…”
Journaling Prompt – Holiday family gatherings bring their own particular breed of stress–even if you *like* your family. How do you feel about your various family (and extended family) members? How would you like to feel? Or are you’re planning to stay home this year?
Memoir Prompt – What holiday family traditions have you inherited from your parents (or your spouse’s parents)? What holiday traditions did you create on your own (even if by accident)?
Submission Information
If you would like to contribute to the “How I Use The Journal”, “Writing Exercises”, or “Tips & Tricks” sections, or would like to submit an article about journaling, writing, or another The Journal-related topic, we would love to hear from you.
Submissions for the newsletter should be sent to: support@davidrm.com
If you are submitting for a particular section, please indicate which one. Try to limit your submissions to 500-1000 words. Submissions may be edited for length and content.
If you prefer to remain anonymous, please state this in the email. Otherwise your name (but not your email) will be used in the article heading.
As always, if you have any suggestions for, or bug reports about, The Journal, please feel free to email them. Both are always welcome.