Writing equipment

Photo by minifig

Blogging has been around since the 1990s, but has become widely accepted and popular over the last few years; from large scale sites to niche and very personal there is something out there for just about everyone.

If you want to join the trend and be a blogger you can quickly set up a site on Blogger or WordPress. However, just because its easy doesn’t mean it is right for everyone, for example what if you don’t think you can write regularly, or you are not interested in looking after the site upkeep. Can you still participate? Of course you can, you just need to existing blogs you can write for; here are a few ideas:  ... Read more 385 words, 1 image

• Ask friends and family – Do any of your friends or family have blogs? Are they on topics you are knowledgeable?
• Work or associations – Does your company or association  e.g. sports club, school drama club have a blog?
• Blogs you interact on – If you’ve written several good quality comments on a blog the owner is likely to have noticed you and has already seen your writing style. Get in touch and explain why you’d like to write for their site and the topics you’d like to cover
• Blogging jobs – There are frequently blogging jobs going on a variety of blogging boards. However, these are often for several posts a week so are not suitable if you want to write irregularly plus they usually need track record.
• Guest post services – Sign up to a site like Myguestblog that provides a forum for blog owners and writers to meet

Kate and sister

I’ve had a lovely long weekend at my parents and had the opportunity to catch up with lots of family I haven’t seen in a long time, including sisters, nephews, cousins, aunts and uncles. A topic of frequent conversation was tracing the family tree because my sister and several other family members have been working on ours for many years.

It is amazing the information available to trace your family back generations, including their livelihood and the the exact house they lived in. Of course this information is available through official records, but the interesting part is often the personal story found through photographs and letters. So what is the equivalent today? For me it is emails, digital photographs and perhaps this blog.

Initially digital seems like a great step forward for the preservation of records, but how many emails from family and close friends are deleted as we are now overloaded with emails and photographs rarely get printed so remain on the computer which is so easy to clear by mistake.

Kate's journals

In one way, I’m offering a lot to anyone wanting to trace my life as I’ve kept journal on and off since I was eleven. They will be able to get a good understanding of my school days, a fair understanding of my university days and a poor understanding of my working life because I have written less frequently over the last few years. So perhaps it isn’t that great a record after all.

Of course we don’t know what the future will hold, digital storage could be in a completely different format meaning everything currently stored on computers or on the web becomes obsolete as has happened with other technologies such as cassette tapes. Or perhaps sites like Facebook will be the future for tracing a family tree and 100 years after the creation of the account they will be opened for public searching as the census is now.  ... Read more 334 words, 2 images