If you don't already know about it, you might want to check out
Plain Clip (free/donationware). This is a small utility you drag into the Dock. After you copy text from any source, you can strip all formatting from it just by clicking on Plain Clip's Dock icon. You can then paste it anywhere you like, and you would not be limited to AppleWorks (not that there's anything wrong with that). There are several other options, but this basic function alone makes Plain Clip worth having. I use it almost every day.
