Stuff I Did Yesterday

I did an experiment yesterday. The goal was to write a couple of articles for inclusion in my monthly newsletter, which I did. The energy and creativity flowed easily and I was pleased with the results. I also posted them here in the blog under the titles, “Smile” and “You Might Not Need a Psychic”. Interestingly, I’d already used the second title in the previous newsletter, but I’m thinking I might have that be a regular piece each month; just something where folks can do their own psychic work.

I created the articles in Word, then, I turned around and began retyping the information directly into my Bravenet newsletter template. I found out a long time ago that if I were to do a cut and paste from Word to the template things just did not translate well and I’d end up with all sorts of symbols sprinkled around the newsletter once it got emailed off to people. It looked terrible, was difficult to read and was a just totally stinky product; not something I was real proud of. So, from then until now I have always retyped everything into the templates, which, is a big waste of time. I tried to quell the frustration by telling myself I type quickly, the pieces are short, so what’s the big deal? But, it’s always sort of nagged at me that it’s not a real efficient process.

Yesterday I signed up for a new Bravenet account and under the new name will do my experimenting with newsletters. I did a cut and paste into the newsletter template from Word and for whatever reason it all worked okay. I have as my subscribers me, myself and I using three different email addresses that I’ve got, one via gmail, one with my home account and one with the Talking To Spirit account. All three of the newsletters were received in good condition. And, on top of that I began to read the helpful tutorials that come with a newbie account and discovered some things with clipart and newsletters I didn’t know were possible. Minor to somebody well versed in html and web stuff, but for me just that tiny bit of information has opened up new doors of creativity. I really enjoy the Bravenet Newsletter service: it’s free, I can have up to 500 subscribers and I can send one newsletter every 24 hours.

I also spent a great deal of time yesterday surfing blogs at BlogExplosion. But, one thing that came to mind was the use of the short blog article. In a rapid surf action I found my attention would skim quickly and having a short piece to read was preferable. I could tell right away if I was going to be interested in it or not. Some people have gotten around that by only posting the first couple of teaser paragraphs to get folks’ attention and then having a link at the end if the person wants to read the rest of the article. Except, with my blogger account I don’t think that is possible.

The other thing to consider is I personally like the longer pieces people write. Also, I find I write longer pieces. The use of pictures to illustrate a blog piece is useful too. But, what I just thought of was to use some sort of graphic curly-cue. So, that’s what I’m going to do with this blog entry, just to see if breaking up the space is easier on the eyes and on the attention span.