I struggled with writing a journal for my ages too. I think a good place to start is to get the right tools. You will need Urupython to compile the files into a .pak file. See the tools section of the wiki for urupython. What is missing is a good editor for python, and I like Python Win 2.5.2. You can get it from:
http://sourceforge.net/project/platform ... p_id=78018
Once you have these tools, use urupython to decompile a pak file from an age that has a journal, and use Python win editor to edit the journal python files. Most of the changes you will need to make are to go from the current age name to your age name.
That is what I did, and eventually it worked, and I had a journal.