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Article:
Documenting Everything: Your Journal is Your Logbook by: Stephen Earley Jordan, II Sailors had it for years. Great explorers had it as well. If you go on an expedition to an ancient Aztec mound, more than likely the archaeologist will have one too - so, why shouldn't you own one? No, I'm not speaking of the scurvy that plagued the sailors! No, I'm not speaking of the Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot, whom explorers claimed to have seen in snowy Manitoba winters. Nor am I speaking of a lost city, which was never truly lost, but simply buried under mounds of earth and recently dug up by an archaeologist. I'm speaking of journals. Journals? Yes! Keeping a journal can be just as much of an adventure as sailing the high seas, exploring unknown Canadian wilderness or digging in the dirt to find buried treasure. Journals have been a source of reflection for centuries. My suggestion is to look at your writing career as if you're an explorer analyzing new-found land; an archaeologist digging up new artifacts and renaming them and so on... How can you do this? Well, view your journal as a logbook and document your daily happenings. Here is a suggested format for keeping your captain's log. Divide your journal entries into sections: Date, Weather, Mood, Events and Freewrite 1. Date: This is the obvious one (for some people). Write the month, day and the year. Also write which day of the week it is (i.e., December '17
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