Returning After a Break

A great deal has changed in my life over the past few years. I moved once from the city to a small town in the country. And not long afterwards, I moved all the way across the country to settle in another small town nestled in the Kootenay Mountains.

For a long while we were without internet at home, or we were sharing our internet while we were staying with family and getting settled. During that time I wasn't really able to write. I worked on a few odd jobs for a friend who needed extra writers to produce content for her contracts, and I tried my hand at translation as a favour for a colleague. Besides those few projects, I'd really not been writing because too much was going on in the rest of my life. Family became the priority.

Roughly a year ago I took up writing for Bubblews just to make a little spending money. I had a number of friends who were doing well there, and because the site is not very demanding it felt like a good place to get my feet wet again after a long absence. It also proved to be a good introduction to web writing for a couple of friends who had little to no experience as writers!

If you are looking for an easy introduction to web writing, Bubblews is a good place to start. Revenue adds up quickly and the payout is fairly fast once you reach the minimum. At present, it takes roughly two weeks after the minimum of $50 is reached.

Writing can be on almost any topic; even personal journal entries are accepted. Posts must be a mere 400 characters long at minimum, so those who worry they can't find anything to say have nothing to worry about. And even rambling journal entries will get traffic!

If you would like to try your hand at writing online and earn a little money doing it, feel free to sign up using my referral link. Once you arrive at Bubblews you can leave a message for me so I know you're there, and I will pop over to your profile to check out what you're writing about.

Want to check out my Bubblews content? Visit my profile!

A Little Blog Test

I've been able to upload and link to certain types of files from a blog, but a friend just asked if it was possible to upload a Word doc or Excel spreadsheet for her readers to download. I wasn't sure if Blogger allowed for this, so I figured I would test it out.

So here I am in Blogger composing a new post, and I'm looking for a place to upload a text. I can insert an image or a video, but don't see a place for uploading a file. Do you? (In theory, you should be able to click on these images to enlarge them. Unfortunately, Blogger seems to have shrunk them in the upload process. I apologize if it's hard to make out the details.)

I figured I could try uploading the doc as an image, but that was rejected right away.

In the end, the only way I could figure to link to a downloadable file was to upload the file to an outside server, or to use another blogging platform. WordPress does allow media uploads, including several kinds of word processing files. I was pleased to see the *.odt format used by OpenOffice was among them! Here's a peek at how it works if I wanted to offer a file for download from my WordPress writing blog:

Bitten By the Blogging Bug :)

Being part of a community of writers is a great way to stay motivated and to share resources. My community at Associated Content is  one of those where members also get each other moving. It’s a very gentle thing, even when a challenge grows from a few comments in a forum post or a Facebook status to something more official. But it usually has the effect of setting a bunch of us off on some writing adventure together.

In July of 2010 we all caught a blogging bug. Those who had never blogged before learned what blogs are and how to write one. Those of us who had been neglecting our blogs for other kinds of writing returned to our blogs, or perhaps started new ones.

In my case, I ended up creating several niche blogs and really giving the Blogger platform a fair shake. I was also inspired to write some articles on blogging for other writers, and as I create this page that work is underway. If the topics interest you, I hope you’ll pop by and read one or more of them.

Writing Blogs

Ruby Writer: The blog you are currently reading, and the place where you can learn more about my writing

Read Write Up: A secondary writing blog at Blogger, which offers different features and has different rules on what content can be displayed. In all likelihood, I will probably merge the two blogs and buy a domain for the resulting writing blog.

Education Blogs

The Character of Education: A look at what public education is and should be; philosophy of education, alternative education and homeschooling; educational policy

Education in Montreal: Topics of interest to students, parents and educators in Montreal and the province of Quebec
 
Homeschool Writer: General topics for those interested in home-based education

Homeschooling in Quebec: Topics of interest to home educators in the Montreal area, and throughout Quebec

School Days: Resources and tips; mainly for parents, but students and classroom teachers may also find it useful

Blogs About Home & Family

Canaduceus: Topics in health care, conditions and diseases, health and wellness from one Canadian’s point of view

Cooking à la Canadienne: History of foods; recipes from Quebec, Canada & elsewhere; tips for food buying & preparation. This blog will run from meal starters and once a month cooking (OAMC) to cooking for picky eaters and people with special needs.

Just Desserts: The politics of food & housing; social justice; sharing our bounty & surviving on a fixed income
 
Parenting in the 21st Century: The challenges of contemporary parenting

The Special Needs Family: Resources for families of special needs children; as I have personal experience with autism spectrum disorders and ADHD, these will be more frequently discussed

Blogs on Other Diverse Topics

Au Tournant des Saisons: Celebrating the turning of the seasons

Between the Worlds: Personal reflections on earth-based religion

Coffee with Kyla: A bit more of a catch-all blog; arts and entertainment, books, recipes, reviews

Wild Thyme Blows: An odd little blog about oral traditions, recitation and the lore of flowers and herbs

Most of these blogs are quite new, so I hope you will be patient as I add content to each of them. I will make an effort to keep an up to date listing at Ruby Writer, so if there are any changes they should appear there.

This post was originally published at Ruby Writer, the sister blog to Read Write Up.

The Trappings of a Writer

When I was about the age my oldest daughter is now, I fell in love with writing paper. There were all sorts of little writing kits in the stores then - note cards, little cardboard folios with matching paper and envelopes, citrus scented paper decorated with oranges and lemons, faux antique paper with Hobby Holly in four different poses. I must have had half a dozen sets at any given time. Oh, and don't even get me started on the blank, fabric-covered "anything books" that turned up a few years later!

Photo by Chris Wightman Creative Commons Attribution 2.0

It seems most of us eschew the old pen & paper methods now. It's rare to use snail mail unless you're sending a package. We email, text & Facebook each other. Writers use a word processor. People keep electronic calendars and to do lists. Some people are even using electronic wedding invitations these days.

But there's no getting away from the trappings, even with our electronic platforms. In fact, maybe it's become more of a distraction than ever. Be honest, have you ever wanted to get some writing done but instead ended up spend an hour browsing through new blog templates and updating your layout so everything looked just right? Have you ever come back a week later, only to redo the whole thing again because the new template is even better than the last one was? I bet you have!

 The trappings of writing are still with us. They are no longer bottles of ink and crisp sheets of paper, but at times they seem almost as tangible. And if they help us get the job done, why complain?