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.

I was pleasantly surprised when last month (August) turned out to be the second-best month for The Journal ever. Only January of this year surpassed it. For the curious, January of any given year is usually the best month. I surmise that this is because of New Years Resolutions combined with a lot of “Internet freetime” brought about from all the paid holidays. In any case, it was cool.

Welcome to the first issue of DavidRM Software’s The Journal Newsletter!

I have several plans for the newsletter. In addition to keeping you up to date with the most recent The Journal releases, I hope to offer valuable tips on using The Journal, and even provide a forum for users to present how they use The Journal.