Before she died, my grandmother spent some time writing out a quick history of her family and all the relatives she could think of.  It was just written in a steno notebook, and the notes were pretty much made as she thought of them, but she wanted to leave a little information for the family and I’m glad she did.  These few pages turned out to be things of beauty.  Over looking the dog-eared pages and the haphazard organization of notes, my grandmother had the most wonderful handwriting!  It was elegant and consistent.

My own handwriting has always been substantially less than stellar.  To start with, I’m a lefty.  Nothing works for us.  Notebook spirals cut into our wrists, ink smears, and your hand hides the letter as you make them.  I mixed cursive and printing with wild abandon.  I capitalized letters for no reason (often in the middle of words).  I felt I was just one handwriting analysis away from being committed to an asylum.  Heaven forbid I try to write something on unlined paper.

I’ve found a lot of people think they have this problem.  In an age when computer keyboards are ubiquitous, no time is spent on penmanship.  No one practices and when they scrawl something across the page they think of it as some sort of birth defect.  “I have lousy handwriting” gets the same inflection with “I was born with a vestigial tale.”

This lack of beauty in their handwriting keeps a lot of people from journaling.  Who wants to fill a book with proof of their weak skills?

I decided, one summer to see if I could fix my own scrawl up a bit.  You know what? It was surprisingly easy to do.  I found a great book to help me out.  Its called  Write Now: A Complete Self-teaching Program for Better Handwriting

Its a simple workbook that you can follow that will teach you some of the basics of improving your own handwriting.

Here’s a list of things I learned about improving my handwriting that summer:

• Consistency is key.  When you decide on how to draw a letter (Capitol or Lowercase) stick with it.  Make all your small a’s look the same.  Cross all your t’s in the same spot.  Ascenders and descenders are the same lengths and bend in consistent fashions. The hump on your h should be the same height as the humps on m’s and n’s” This will go a long way to making your handwriting legible
• Pay attention to letter and word spacing.  Letters go VERY close together.  Words should be separated by about an average letters width (technically the width of an m).
• Start SLOW.  You will need time to build the letter forms into muscle memory.  Draw them slowly at first and very quickly you will get smooth with them.  If you see your handwriting deteriorating, slow down again.
• Practice Practice Practice.  When schools actually taught penmanship (when my grandmother learned) they spent HOURS on drills and copying materials.  It burned the skill into their minds and muscles.  Just like any other skill or sport, proficiency comes with repetition of correct form.  Make beautiful “to-do” lists.  Copy a page from your paperback.  Get in some practice.

When you are happy with your handwriting, you will use it much more often.

Oh and here is a quick link concerning how to hold your pen.

I carry a bag.  It’s like a messenger bag and it holds all sorts of stuff, both useful and useless.  Magazines and books I am reading, my camera, various pens pencils and art supplies, and, most importantly, whatever notebook or journal I am currently using.

This weekend I lost my bag!  I didn’t even realize it until Monday morning (not having need of it until the work week started).  I was panicked to say the least.  In my mad search for the bag I came across my journal.  That’s strange because, as I said, I normally keep my journal IN the bag.  This suggested a scenario to me.  I tend to work in my journal at lunch during the week.  I was willing to bet that I had taken the bag (and journal) to a restaurant sometime the previous week, and for whatever reason I bolted from the table with the journal and not the bag.  Considering I eat out more than I should for lunch (read “daily”) tracking down the bag would normally be quite and undertaking.  Fortunately I had my journal and that made it a LOT easier to reconstruct the previous week.  I even had some receipts from lunches stuck between the pages.  Using the information in the journal I was quickly able to trace my eating backwards through the week and found my bag at the second restaurant I checked.  How’s that for using a journal in a practical fashion?

I have spent more time than I normally do in the current book I am using for journaling.  I think its because I never really liked it.  When you get a book you like you connect with it.  You tend to fill it up faster. In keeping with my tradition of starting new books (and ending old ones) at the first of months, August 1 marks the change over to a new volume.  As I enjoy binding my own journals I decided to go all out this time and push my skills.

This book marks my first attempt a a classic, cord-bound, leather spine, codex.  If I do say so myself, I think its as fine a job as can be done with no special tools. Its got a good feel to it already.  I can hardly wait till this weekend to start it.  The rest of this week will be transferring important info from the last book to the new one.

One of the great pleasures I have in journaling is filling a book, therefore giving me the opportunity to buy a wonderful new book to write in. I go through many phases in my choices for journals. Sometimes I make a wonderful book, sometimes I purposefully make and “ugly journal.” Often though, I browse the bookstores in search of that perfect book.

Well, there is a lot of stress involved with owning the “perfect book.” It takes a while to get up the courage to even write in them. For this reason I’ve come up with a quick list of ten hacks for your perfect book. These are 10 things you can do with your journal that will make it even more useful and practical, without damaging or changing the book in any way.

• 1. A rubber band — I actually use a black ponytail holder. All you have to do is stretch it around the book you are using and it holds the book closed, holds in any loose papers or ephemera and is a handy place to clip a pen.
• 2. A zipper bag — I’m not talking about a food storage bag here, though I have used those to protect my journal while camping or hiking. What I’m referring to here are the plastic pouches you can get in various sizes in office supply stores. They are great for, not only protecting your book, but for carrying pens, pencils, scissors or any number of tools along with your journal for easy access.
• 3. An envelope — shoving an envelope in the back of the book is great for keeping receipts, notes on napkins, collected business cards, ticket stubs or whatever. Its one of the features that make the Moleskine books so popular.
• 4. Binder clip — Along the same lines as an envelope.  Clipping a binder-clip onto the front or back of your book is a great way to secure loose items.
• 5. A bookmark (or several) — Another easy and useful hack. Not only can you mark your place in the book, but also if you use several marks you can mark important places in your journal, like lists or a current 2-page-spread.
• 6. Divider tabs — Easy to find in office supply stores, these useful little dividers take the idea of bookmarks up a notch. Most are movable/removable so they wont damage the pages in your book but are a good way to delineate sections of your journal. Very handy if you are keeping several journals in one book.
• 7. A calendar — you can actually use a calendar as a bookmark or just leave it stuffed inside the book. They are great for marking the date or counting down to an event or remembering the order of events when you are playing catch-up in your journal. You can find all sizes and forms online to print, cut to size and customize.
• 8. Sticky notes — Keeping a small (10-20) stack of blank sticky notes on the inside cover of our journal can be invaluable for making random notes, jotting down numbers, marking pages, adding to older entries or any number of things.
• 9. Cord shoulder strap — This is a trick I learned from an artist friend. He carried is sketchbook everywhere, when hiking or traveling he had an ingenious way of keeping his hands free while at the same time keeping his sketchbook at hand for quick work. Take a piece of cord and tie it into a big loop. Close your book over one side of the cord and snap a rubber band around it. Take the remaining section of the loop and drape it over your shoulder. Voila! Instant carrying strap for your book.
• 10. USB Dongle — This hack is a bit on the hi-tech side of journaling, but it is the 21st century after all. I came up with a bookmark that consists of a short piece of craft hemp. On one end is a large wooden bead and on the other is a tiny USB drive. I keep it draped in my book. I suppose you could keep it attached to the elastic around your book or in the zipper bag or stashed into the envelope in the back. However you choose to ad it to your journal, they are being made so small today that you will hardly realize you are carrying one. You can keep all manner of digital info and ephemera on the drive. Links to sites, notes you’ve typed or copied from other sources, movies, photos, scanned documents and even a portable copy of journaling software. It keeps your classic, paper journal relevant in the digital age. Check out some of these.

And there you have it. Ten quick, easy, non-destructive, and for the most part inexpensive hacks to help you get the most out of your journal.

I am in the process of rethinking the posting schedule for Practical Journal Keeping.  I am gonna add more stuff.  More posts during the week and more information coming at all times.  Unfortunately all the planning for the new stuff  ate up my weekend for getting the regular stuff ready for the post today. (By the way, if the Google spiders are looking for the word “stuff” I should hit the number one spot, right?)
The tentative plan starting next week is a normal, informative journal technique or hack on Mondays, then a book or journal review on Wednesdays, and finally a link fest on Fridays (where I will spotlight some of the other great journal related sites on the web.

Now for something at least a bit informative and journal related:

The Pig Pen Cipher, Masonic Cipher, or Templars Code. A classic.

Care to guess what these people have in common?

Beatrix Potter, writer of children’s stories
Charles Wesley, founder of the Methodist church
William Byrd II, colonial writer, patriarch, planter, and leader
Leonardo Da Vinci, inventor/artist
Samuel Pepys, 17th century man-about-town

Well, yes, the easy answer is that they all kept journals.  More to the point of this post, however, they were all famous for keeping their respective journals in code.  Many of them weren’t deciphered until long years after they died.

Does this sound familiar?  “I can’t keep a journal, what if someone finds it”? So…put the juicy bits in code.

I’ve found that keeping your entire journal in code can be a bit cumbersome.  I am all about keeping your journaling as practical and useful as possible. Sometimes, however, you just can’t risk it.  It’s just as effective to encode a name or a place or (certainly) a Christmas list.

I became interested in codes and secret writing at a very early age.  At one time I had an entire journal dedicated to collecting secret writing systems.  If I found a coded message in a mystery novel I would jot the key down in the book.  I had codes from The Shadow and the Dancing Men from Sherlock Holmes.  I transcribed the fictional alphabets of Tolkien, and Krypton, and the Disney movie, Atlantis.  I copied the rune systems of the Celts, the Vikings and the Dwarves of Middle earth. I was well suited to keep any secret I needed to.

Codes need not be so very complicated.  Leonardo simply wrote backwards. A very useful code, that is easy to remember and yet will foil the casual observer might go something like this:

an ythin gyo umigh td ot ofoo lth eey ecoul dthro wof f acasua lsnoo p.

I’ll leave it up to you to decode this message.

I had my trusty book of collected codes to draw from at any time.  You don’t need one.  You can, of course, use a bit of personal creativity to hide your secrets, or, if you are like me and interested in the methods of the rest of the world, there are many websites dedicated to codes and ciphers.

The site I check out constantly is basically an online version of my old codebook.  It’s called Omniglot.com.  Omniglot.com is a fantastic collection of writing systems from around the world, throughout history and literature and even from the imaginations of people out there today.  Admittedly some of the writing systems are a bit complex (one I’ve seen recently actually has animated, spinning letters), but there are plenty that can serve as a code for your journal or at least as a jumping off point for creating your own.

You have got to admit.  We live in a pretty amazing time.  In the past, if you wanted to keep a journal you were pretty much stuck using a book and a pen.  I am the first to jump to the defense of such a classic style of journaling, but today there are SO MANY OPTIONS!  Yes, there will always be a place for the book and pen.  There is nothing as fool-proof, accessible, tactile, and just plain cool as a favorite paper based journal.  But check out this article on Lifehacker.

I love all of the mentioned options and techniques.  I use, or have at least tried most of them. As a guy that’s easily distracted by the next guys journaling tools I have come up with a couple of guide lines for keeping the journal practical while playing around with different tools.

Firstly:  One journal to rule them all! pick one technique and use it consistently.  For me its my book and pen. Its always with me.  I jot in it all the time.  If I want to use the computer to write up an essay on a subject, that’s cool.  If I want to use a voice recorder or Jott or start a new blog, that’s all well in good.  I think of all the new and exciting techniques as supplemental to the paper journal.  Your number one journal may not be your book and pen, but what ever it is, don’t abandon it for another technique.

And the second guideline:  Reference, reference, reference! If you were to flip through one of my journals you will see innumerable URLs, file locations, and qv.’s of all sorts.  This is so that I can locate information that may be stored in another format.  I am constantly referencing my Evernote account.  Evernote is a great way to get notes, quotes and photos on the fly, or to even store entire Internet articles.  Instead of reproducing it for the paper journal I will just give a brief description of the content and then put the letters EN in a circle.  That tells me to look for the info in my Evernote file.

One of the most productive uses for a journal is to just sit down to figure things out.  When things stick in your mind or there is a decision to make or a problem to solve, your journal can be the perfect place to get it all sorted out before you make a move.  Using your journal for something as simple as a sounding board for you ideas can take you a long way toward refining them.

I discovered a book a few years ago that addresses this very subject.  Its called Accidental GENIUS; Revolutionize Your Thinking Through Private Writing (Mark Levy).  It’s a short but powerful book that takes you through several techniques of uncovering your own genius, creativity and problem solving skills.  These techniques include fast, nonstop timed freewriting, having conversations with the page and finding (or not finding) evidence to support ideas.

The book is short and to the point.  Reading it is a small investment in time that can lead to BIG changes in the way you approach your thought processes.

I find it usefull to use some of these techniques with a two-page-spread that I’ve discussed earlier.

When I was young I didn’t keep a journal, I was a spy!  I read Harriet the Spy and was instantly copying her notebook antics.  She kept a notebook, I kept a notebook.

Recently there have been more books written in the diary form and my niece is all over them.  She is 9-years old, and though I haven’t been able to persuade her to start a journal of her own, she LOVES reading other peoples diaries.  More precisely she likes to read novels written in a diary format.

Here are three of her favorites:

Diary of a Wimpy Kid
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw
All diaries with accompanying cartoons.

Dear Dumb Diary (the entire series) by Jim Benton
The Diaries of Jamie Kelly in Mackerel Middle School.  She starts her diary  because her class is doing a unit on journal-writing.  I guess she like is because I am counting at least eight books in the series

The Diary of Melanie Martin: or How I Survived Matt the Brat, Michelangelo, and the Leaning Tower of Pizza

A couple of amazing journal/novels we are reading are:

The fantastic thing about these books (and others in the series’) is that they are totally interactive.  All the phone numbers work and the web addresses actually have clues and information in the story useful for solving the mysteries.

Unfortunately she is not interested in any of the non fictional diaries yet.  No Anne Frank or Zlata, and strangely she is not at all interested in the Princess Diaries.

And I have to say there is an impressive number of diaries out there for your young ones to actually write in.  A lot of them come with prompts on the pages and a fill-in-the-blank motif but some are the traditional blank books with tiny locks with popular characters on them.  Here are a couple of the more creative diaries I’ve seen.

I have to admit I get interested in a lot of things.  Sometimes there is no rhyme or reason to what I am suddenly interested in.  I might start out the day with a slight interest in soap carving and suddenly around lunchtime I am introduced and obsessed with the Tung shing (Chinese almanacs).  I am only partly responsible for this.  Yeah I am easily distracted but the Internet is MADE to take me from one subject to another.  What’s a guy to do?

Well I take a page (figuratively and literally) from Barbara Sher’s book, Refuse to Choose.  Barbra identifies with so many of us that go through a half a dozen interests a day.  She has coined the term “scanner” for us.  She realizes that for most of these ideas and interests we don’t necessarily want to get a Ph.D. in the subject but feel the need to at least explore it for an indefinite amount of time.  She suggests the use of a journal that she calls a daybook to record these ideas for later and to explore them for as long as we feel compelled to.

The main tool I’ve adopted from this concept is her use of a two-page spread in the daybook.  Basically what it amounts to is opening your journal (this works great with larger format books) and using two facing pages to record everything regarding the subject you are pursuing.  Anytime you are researching this subject, you turn back to this spread and just add to it.  Soon you have a spread that is very dense with lists, names, websites, drawings, mind maps and thoughts.  It’s all neatly contained on the two-page spread for later reference if needed so you don’t have to cull the information from various pages scattered throughout the book.  If you need more than a two page spread, make another.  I generally use the next spreads to explore a detail from the first spread.

A quick 2-page spread planning a hiking trip to Moab this year.

Uses I’ve found for a two-page spread:

Taking a trip to a new city?  Do some research on what you might like to do there.

Buying a camera? List your pros and cons, wish lists and price lists and even glue in some pictures from the web.

A day at the beach? Sketch some shells and then later you can identify them.

Reading a good book?  Keep notes on the mystery or info from the biography.

Joined a new club?  List new friends names, meeting times, buzzwords etc.