Welcome to the Heart of Summer 2008! (Or the Heart of Winter for those of you south-of-the-equator.) In this newsletter, Jon Medlock shares how he is preserving his families letters in The Journal, and we have new set of writing exercises.

Welcome to June 2008! (Or at least the 2-3 days left of June. Where *did* the month go?) This month’s Tips & Tricks show how you can doodle in The Journal, and we have a new set of writing prompts.

This month’s tip tells you how to add descriptions to your images, and then how to search through those descriptions. And, of course, we have another set of prompts for free writing, journaling and memoir writing.

April Fools Day came a few day early for me this year. Less than 6 hours after I sent out last month’s newsletter, with its article about the need for backups–the hard drive of my primary computer (a usually pleasant-tempered little Dell laptop I bought in 2005) suffered a catastrophic failure. Talk about bizarre karma. And, yes, irony. 🙂

Welcome to Spring 2008! Spring is traditionally a time of rebirth. Of flowers and trees. Of animals cute and otherwise. And allergies. (Pardon me while I rub my eyes and try not to sneeze…)

February 2008 is now almost over. Do you know where your month went?
(And could you help me find *mine*?)

The new year is now well underway. I spent the last week or so of December hammering out my goals for the year. And then spent the first couple weeks of January revising them. Life is like that. Sometimes you make plans. Sometimes the plans find you.

The winter holidays are a time of family and friends coming together–sometimes because of winter storms and power outages–and, for me at least, a time of reflection. I like to look back on the year that’s ending, and review what went right, what went wrong, what went according to plan, and what came at me from out of the blue. I also look forward to the New Year and create goals and plans–and wonder how much of that will be upended before June. It’s fun. =)

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. 🙂

A Reminder: NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is next month, November. If you’ve ever wanted to write a novel (or just something a lot *like* a novel), you can now join thousands of others from across the USA and around the world as they string words into sentences, sentences into chapters and chapters into a 50,000-word novel–all in just 30 days.