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This week's ReEntry editor is a 44-year-old bibliophile (reads four books a week) and has been happily married for eighteen years. He has three kids, two of which are totally nonverbal and autistic. He's maintained his own journal, Nova Notes, which he has been writing daily, without fail, since February 1997. At the beginning of 1998, he started putting his own drawings as illustrations as part of his journal entries. He has taken a leading role as moderator of the journal-l mailing list. He also belongs to Open Pages, Archipelago, Often, Journal Windows, Talking Out Loud, Storytellers and several other journal-related webrings. Al Schroeder Nova Notes al.schroeder@nashville.com

In general, what I look for in a journal entry is a good storyteller. In this column I'm going to pick on the obscure as well as the well-known. I like promoting relatively unknown journals...on the other hand, there is a reason why those journals which are better known are so popular. It doesn't even have to be a real story...it can be a musing, or a flight of fancy, or an idle thought...and just watching someone take a concept and run with it is a wonderful thing.

One such example is "Spontaneous Oral Expulsions" and her hilarious entry "Redefining My Job Duties." Zoe is a special ed teacher, and she read in a HEALTH magazine how ED now means "erectile dysfunction." She didn't remember that in her job description, and mused how this would change her duties and the focus of her job... and that she didn't mean to be, ummm, laying down on the job, as it were...

Or read the hilarious entry "Sawed Off Shotguns and Hoo-Hoo Dillys" by "Squirrel Bait," which features, among other things, semi-skinny-dipping by the terminally body-conscious Meghan, lust for Dove Bars, Waffle House chicken sandwiches, a sawed-off shotgun acting as an alarm clock... and the best party of Meghan's life. Meghan is one of the most wonderful storytellers on the Web, and if she's well-known, she deserves to be...

Another journal that does a wonderful slice-of-life-entry is Lynda's "(Parenthesis)," where she often explores issues resulting from a troubled past, a less-than-perfect marriage, occasional flareups of lupus... but I like it best when the focus is occasionally on her good times, as in "The Redskins' Secret Weapon." There you see the joy of her daughter, Bethany, unexpectedly going to a Redskins game with them. That might sound dull... but read it, as Lynda catches the joy of making a child happy, and how infectious it can be, how it can heighten your own joy.

Sometimes someone catches the small, still moments in a poetic way... the feeling we all get, for instance, of being alone in a large house, and seeing an intruder... or even a ghost. The aptly-named "Senses" captured the part doubting, part hoping, part fearful feeling of this perfectly in her "Ghost" entry. She did so with the sensibilities of a poet and with a refusal to worry about being laughed at, at trying to express the unexpressable and capture the intangible.

Everybody and their mother reads "The Mighty Kymm," and puts her on their "favorites" list. Well? There's a reason for that. She's one of the most accomplished storytellers on the web. Read her August 17 entry and you'll see how she copes with the unaccustomed role as babysitter. Sometimes it's more what is not told, or rather, where enough is mentioned to tantalize you without filling in the blanks. When she talks about how the couple she was babysitting for went to an S&M restaurant (!) all sorts of mental images cascade through the reader's mind, prompted by her mention, and not burdened by mere reality. The best journallers know when to tell just enough  without telling too much.

It's a lesson a lot of on-line journal writers have not learned....including myself.

Original "ReEntry" concept by Gus () and other DIARY-L participants.