This is a photo of Kerry Kijewski.

Interview With A Blind Woman

This is a photo of Kerry Kijewski.

Blind people should not be avoided, shunned, or ignored.

This past year, I have encountered two blind people online.

You probably already know Maxwell Ivey, whom I interviewed and who is now a blogging coach and author of Leading You Out of the Darkness Into the Light (which I edited for him). If you have already visited Max’s blog or had any type of interaction with him, you know that he is a sweet man with a heart of gold. He’s also inspirational in many ways: he lost over two hundred pounds in two years, he owns two businesses (one which involves buying and selling carnival rides), he is a blogger, he’s on social media, and he’s now proud of the fact he’s blind and has accomplished so much in his life.

However, you might not yet know Kerry.

This is a photo of Kerry Kijewski, by the water on one of her trips.

Kerry. Kerry. Who the Heck is Kerry?

Kerry Kijewski is a blind woman. But she is so much more than just that.

She’s a great writer, an insightful person, and a pleasure to talk to, both through emails and Skype. (Aah, I love technology!)

Kerry agreed to let me interview her, too. It seemed only fitting that I should have a post about an interview with a blind woman on my site, as I already have An Interview With a Blind Man on Wording Well.

Kerry is a blogger, a writer, and insightful traveller. Her writing site is a free blog called Her Headache, and her travel site is her new, hosted site called The Insightful Wanderer.

I first met Kerry through LinkedIn, after being told about her by Max, and then through a comment I left for her on her blog.

This is a screenshot of my intro comment to Kerry.

 

This is a photo of Kerry Kijewski, by a castle, on one of her trips.

A Blind Woman Who Wants to Travel?

Kerry’s goals include pursuing a career in writing and travelling the world.

Before you jump to any conclusions about that last statement, know that I initially had a hard time believing it, too. But when you think about it, she has every right to do the same things sighted people do. Her experience, however, will be a bit different from yours or mine. She’ll utilize her other senses to enjoy the locations she visits.

In fact, before we get to the in-depth interview, here is a super-brief introduction to Kerry, using what Kerry has to say about herself and her desire to travel:

I just want to say that I’m no different from anyone else. I’m really not. I’m not scary. I like music, movies, books, autumn, chocolate, and pizza.

I love to laugh and have a wicked sense of humour, if I do say so myself.

I like symmetry.

I love to go to concerts, on day trips/road trips, and theme parks. Even blind girls wanna have fun!

I like to sing, but I am not great.

I love history, psychology, literature, and pop culture.

I love the scent immediately after a spring rain, the fragrance of freshly cut grass in summer,, the crispness of the fall air, or the fresh and still silent snowfall that I smell in the night.

Think what life would be like if you only stayed inside your own little bubble, if you didn’t get out and discovered the world around you. that’s all I want to do. I stand at a place like Niagara Falls and, although I am not taking in its majesty with my eyes, my remaining senses step in and take over. I feel the spray of the mist on my face, I grip the cold railing, smelling the cool windy air, listening to the roar and feeling its vibration through the stone at my feet.

That is what travel can be for me. Just because I can’t see it (which must be really hard for people to wrap their heads around), does that mean I deserve to experience such things for myself any less?

I get something out of going somewhere new and meeting the people who live there. I eat the food and listen to the accents and the differences in speech, but I still see the same humanity that I see everywhere.

We are all the same, despite our differences. That’s the lesson I get from travel and of which I want to impart, whether it’s people from another country, who speak a different language, observe a different religion, or whatever it may be. This translates to living with any difference or “disability” like blindness, that people can’t imagine for themselves, but we all need to try and put ourselves in one another’s shoes to truly find our common ground.

I miss looking at pictures every day. I still like to hear descriptions of something. I can imagine how a certain light hits something. I can imagine a look, but yet I can’t. I try. I don’t just retreat into my own experience of the world.

I have an imagination and I saw more at one time. I have the ability to envision my surroundings.

Travel is also, in huge part, who you are with. It’s the people you experience the world with that make the experience so special.

If the conditions are just right, if the light hits the face of my niece or nephew in just the right way, I catch a glimpse of sweetness in their faces.

Just because blind people can’t see doesn’t mean we don’t wonder what someone of the opposite sex might look like. The inability to see it doesn’t take away the instinct to want to know anyway.

As you can clearly see, Kerry is a woman of substance. Most people, however, can’t seem to look past her blindness, and that’s one of the reasons I wanted to showcase her today and do an in-depth interview with her.

This is a photo of Kerry Kijewski, when she did a CN Tower Edge Walk, on one of her trips.

An Interview With A Blind Woman, Kerry Kijewski

Some of the questions have several parts, and some of Kerry’s answers are fairly long. However, I hope you read through each question and response carefully, as Kerry reveals certain things about herself that you don’t want to miss!

Without further ado, please get to know Kerry a bit! I’m sure you’ll come to like her as much as I do! At the very least, you’ll learn a bit about this blind woman and realize that not all blind folk should be clumped together in a stereotypical category, or be treated so differently that they are made to feel like freaks.

Enjoy the interview!

Read More

Enter a Book Giveaway! (Dec. 12 to 24th)

Black Fountain Goddess cover

Do you like good fiction novels? I do.

Do you like contests/giveaways?  I do.

Do you like autographed copies of books?  I do.

Enter a Giveaway!

Wording Well is pleased to announce that Laying It Out There is currently running a giveaway of The Black Fountain Goddess.

This book is Jean Moynahan’s second novel, and it’s really, really good. (I have a copy of her first book, The Illuminated Vineyard, which is on my list of books to read.)

Read the Book Review

In fact, this novel is so good that I’ve reviewed this book on Goodreads and have also blogged about it, on my author site, Laying It Out There.

Enter the Giveaway!

I’ve have done a few giveaways in the past, but never have I used Rafflecopter to do so.

But there’s a first time for everything!

So I’m using Rafflecopter this time, and I’m really, really hoping to make this giveaway a huge success!

I’d like to invite you to read my review of this book, learn a bit about the author, and enter the contest.

You can do so by visiting this link.

Hurry! Enter NOW!

Win an autographed copy of The Black Fountain Goddess!

How to Customize the Size of Your Blog Post Images #video #tutorial

How to Customize the Size of your blog post images

Have you ever needed to customize or adjust the size of one of your blog post images? Have you ever edited an image using Colorcinch (aff link)?

I have done the former… especially when I learned how to create image quotes.

I also learned a little trick that some of you might know about. It is simple, really, and I created a video for this blogging tip, too.

In fact, I created this tutorial using some new screen recording software I have never worked with before, and am quite pleased with how it turned out! (*pats self on the back*)

It took a while for me to learn how to use it, but now that I have, you can probably expect more videos from me! 😉

Please watch the video to learn how to customize the size of your blog post images. This tutorial shows the steps you need to follow. They are simple, and you’ll be able to easily customize your blog post images once you watch it.

FYI, if you want a transcript of this video, you can find it below. Thanks goes out to my transcriptionist, Angela Shirley, whose services you can use, too!

How To Customize the Size of Your Blog Post Images: Video Tutorial

One Important Note about the CUSTOM Image Option

I didn’t mention in the video is that the Custom option is only available once the image has been uploaded. Therefore, the steps are:

1. Upload the image.

2. Edit the image. Choose Custom Size.

3. Save.

Video Transcript of How to Customize the Size of Your Blog Post Images 

Here is a transcription of the video, for those of you who can read faster than you can listen:

Hi, this is Lorraine Reguly from Wording Wel,l bringing to you a bite-size blogging tip you can use any time you need to customize or adjust the size of an image in one of your blog posts. In fact I am going to show you how to do it using three different scenarios, one from each of my blogs: Wording Well, Laying It Out There and Poetry Perfected.

Now what we are going to do is we are going to is look at three different scenarios, the first dealing with a square image, the second with the rectangular one, and the third involves adjusting an image on a free blog on WordPress.com. I know not all of you have self-hosted blogs yet, and so I don’t want to exclude anyone from this tutorial.

Let’s get started.

Now, once you have uploaded an image from your computer into your WordPress dashboard, and notice that it’s not the right size – perhaps it’s either too big or too small – all you have to simply do is click on the picture. And here, in the “Interview A Blind Woman” post that I have yet to publish, but is coming soon on Wording Well, I am going to adjust the picture of Kerry, to make it a just little bit smaller. So click on the image and you will see two little squares pop up on the left hand side. If you click on the edit option – automatically a window will pop up. Now under the display settings, the first line shows you where the picture is located. Here I have it in the center. And then underneath is the size. And this is the part we are going to focus on.

It’s a dropdown menu, and if we click on it you’ll see there are some pre-set options: thumbnail, medium, large, full size, or custom size. Now we are going to click on Custom Size as sometimes the pre-sets simply aren’t good enough. So if you click Custom Size, underneath you will see the width and the height. We only actually only have to change one of them. WordPress will change the other one for us. From past experience, I know that I can choose 600 to be a good width for my pictures or my images. Now, if you don’t really understand the numbers, that’s okay. You don’t need to. You can learn as you go, through trial and error.

So now that we have selected 600 – because it is square, it is going to be 600 x 600 – we’ll update the post. We will update the image and then save this draft of our post… and once that has been saved, we can take a little preview of it and see if we made a good choice.

So when we preview it, we can see that Kerry’s picture shows up quite nicely within one window screen, and then the post goes on. So we made a good choice.

So let’s move on to the next part, on Laying It Out There, where we are going to deal with a rectangular image.

Here I have chosen a post called “Who I am + How I Became a Self-Published Author,” because you can see my little calling card or online business card is quite small and hard to read. Now because since this post has already been published, we are simply going to click Edit Post and change the size of the image.

So, again, here all we have to do is click on the image – our little boxes come up, we’ll select edit. And because, when we click on our sizes 541 x 247, I am actually not going to check the Custom Size. I will check the Full Size instead, simply because the writing will be more legible than if we were to Custom Size it and make it quite large. And I will show you the difference. So if we Custom Size it to 600, WordPress automatically calculates the height and it looks a little bit blurry. So let’s go back and change it to the Full Size and you can see how the writing is clear here. So we’ll update the post with this nice, new, re-sized image that’s legible, clear, and perfect. And we can just hit View Post to double check.

Excellent.

Okay, now we’re going to look at an image on a free blog of mine, which is Poetry Perfected. It’s on WordPress dot com, and in kind of keeping with the same theme – here is a poem I wrote called “My Blind Friends Taught Me To See” and Kerry is allowing me to use her image once again in this post.

And the only problem is that when we click on it, nothing comes up on the left-hand side. However, we do see a different bar show up on the right where we have our different alignments and the Edit. So we will click on the Edit and we will change this to Custom Size once again.

Although the large is 605 x 605 we could choose that. But we will choose custom size, we’ll go to 600 again. We will update this, and we’ll save our draft. And then once we have our draft saved, we can preview the post and see if we made a good choice.

So here we can see Kerry’s picture, very pretty girl, and underneath, because this is a poem called “My Blind Friends Taught Me To See,” there’s also a picture of Max, but Max’s image right now is really, really small and it is really not fair to him to have such a small image when Kerry’s is so big.

So what we are going to do is go back to this post. We’ll go underneath Kerry and click on Max, and we will edit this image here. So you can see this is just a thumbnail. We’ll go to Custom Size and we will make it … the width as being 500. The height we see is 889. So that is still a little bit big. So let us make this part 600 and then the width will be automatically calculated at 338. We’ll hit Update and let’s take a look and see how this looks.

We’ll save our draft, and then we will preview the post, and if it all looks good, then we are good to go. And yes, it looks perfect. You can see Kerry here, you can see Max here. We can actually make Max’s picture just a tad bit bigger. So let’s go back and edit it once again, and this time we will choose 700 instead of 600 for the height. We’ll update it. We will save our draft, and we’ll will take one final look at the Preview and see if this looks good… see if they kind of balance each other out. And they do.

So there is Kerry, there is Max, and there’s the poem. So that looks like we have made really good choices.

So as you can see, there are different ways you can customize your blog posts. You can choose either a pre-set, custom size, or one of the pre-sets – medium, large, thumbnail, full size, whatever. So there you have it.

So this has been a little tutorial for you. I hope you’ve learned something and don’t forget to stop by Wording Well and grab your free e-book (compliments of me), “20 Blog Post Must-Haves.

You can get it right here.

Thank you so much. Have a good day.

UPDATE:

FYI, An Interview With A Blind Woman has been published.

So has An Interview with a Blind Man.

I hope you have enjoyed this post, How to Customize the Size of Your Blog Post Images #video #tutorial.

Please remember to share it on social media!

“F.I.T.S.” SERIES: Featuring #freelancewriter Corinne Kerston

FITS Series Welcome Image

 

Today’s “Freelancer In The Spotlight” is Corinne Kerston. You’re going to learn a lot from her, so get ready to dive in!

Did you pick up your other free gift yet? Get it when you subscribe to my author newsletter.

Corinne Kerston head shot

Take it away, Corinne!

How I Stumbled Into the Freelancing Field

For someone who grew up writing poems and reading all the time, I actually stumbled into freelance writing by chance.

I graduated from college with a bachelor’s degree in English, and immediately began applying anywhere and everywhere. I landed a job as an accountant for a local Property Management company. Because that makes sense, right? I won’t be all dramatic and say I was miserable, because I wasn’t. I was earning a steady paycheck and I was satisfied.

And then I had kids and my outlook completely changed.

After I had my first child in 2007, I continued to work full-time. But I felt like I was missing everything. I missed her first steps, her first words. So when I became pregnant with my 2nd child, I decided I would stay home.

I still had no idea that I could write for a living. I know … I don’t have a clue how I didn’t figure this out yet. I began looking at work-at-home jobs. I knew a medical transcriptionist who worked from home, and I thought that was a viable option.

Then I met a freelance writer on a cloth-diapering forum of all places. I was intrigued! I had my “duh Corinne!” moment, wondered why I hadn’t thought of writing before and messaged her about her career. I wanted to know more! She had a webinar on breaking into ghostwriting and she offered it to me for free.

See, I told you I totally stumbled into this career by chance. And I’m so grateful I did.

Beginning My Freelancing and Writing Career

I started writing for a few clients in late 2010 shortly before my son was born. By the time he was born, I had a couple blogging clients and I was writing for some content mills. The money wasn’t great, but hey, I was earning money and staying home with my kids. I was ecstatic.

Since then, I’ve grown as an online writer, as a blogger, as a marketer and a business person. I have ditched the content mills for good. I even self-published a few eBooks, including Start Your Freelance Writing Career: Everything You Need to Know to Get Started Working From Home.

Corinne's ebook cover

Here are some of the gems I have learned along the way.

Top 5 Freelancing Tips from Corinne

1: Pick a Niche.

In the freelancing world, there are generalists and there are specialists. I find generalizing may open you up to a whole bunch of different types of clients, but specializing allows you to command higher rates. To pick a niche, look at what you are good at, things you enjoy and areas you have experience in.

2: Have a website.

I can’t stress this enough. Have a website! It’s essential. How else are you going to show potential clients how great your writing it? While you are at it, how about adding a blog? A blog can act as your samples, but also as helps with traffic and getting readers to your site.

3: Get samples up right away.

Even if you’re just starting out, you can find samples. Use old papers you wrote, write free reports, self-publish articles on article submission sites, or do pro bono work. Yes, you won’t be getting paid for your writing at this point, but you will build a great portfolio so that you will land those money-paying jobs.

4: Don’t be afraid to ask what you’re worth.

‘Cause you are worth it.

Don’t get in the mindset of comparing yourself to other writers or other bloggers, because you’re not them. If you know your writing is worth it, set your asking price fairly high. Of course, use some business common sense. If you’re just breaking into an industry and have no experience whatsoever, you can’t very well ask $200 a blog post. But, once you have established yourself as a writer, earned some street cred, you can most certainly raise your prices.

5: Get it in writing.

Contracts are gold when you freelance. I have learned this hard way. Contracts don’t only protect you, but they also protect your client. You can easily write up a simple contract yourself, just make sure that you include things like your agreed-upon price and payment terms, what you will be writing, how many words, when you are expected to turn it in, if any edits are included and any other expectations. Make it impossible for the client to spring extra work on your without renegotiating your contract. Include privacy and rights to content clauses to protect your clients and a contract is a win-win for everyone.

 

Now it’s your turn:

How did you break into freelance writing?

Did you always dream of writing as a career or did you just stumble into it, too?

Corinne’s freelancing “must haves” are samples, a website, and a contract. What are yours?

Share your thoughts, story, and/or answers in the comments, and please thank Corinne publicly for sharing her awesomeness with us!

Check out the other freelancers in this series:

Some Life Updates and Info about Freelancing from #freelancewriter Lorraine Reguly

An Interview With “F.I.T.S.” Series #freelancewriter Elna Cain

“F.I.T.S.” SERIES: Featuring #freelancewriter Candace Simonson

“F.I.T.S.” SERIES: Featuring #freelancewriter DD, an Addicted-to-Heroin #Freelancer

“F.I.T.S.” SERIES: Featuring #freelancewriter Alicia Rades

F.I.T.S.” SERIES: Featuring #freelancewriter Ali Luke

“F.I.T.S.” SERIES: Featuring #freelancewriter Joe Warnimont

“F.I.T.S.” SERIES: Featuring #freelancewriter Brian Morris

F.I.T.S.” SERIES: Featuring #freelancewriter Janine Ripper

“F.I.T.S.” SERIES: Featuring #freelancewriter Harleena Singh

“F.I.T.S.” SERIES: Featuring #freelancewriter Crystal Nay

“F.I.T.S.” SERIES: Featuring #freelancewriter Christy Birmingham

“F.I.T.S.” SERIES: Featuring #freelancewriter Tom Bentley

“F.I.T.S.” SERIES: Featuring #freelancewriter William Ballard

“F.I.T.S.” SERIES: Featuring #freelancewriter Deevra Norling

Freelancing Tips From Kirsty Stuart #freelancingtips for #freelancers

7 Reasons for the FITS Series on Wording Well (with results!)

If you want to raise your freelancing rates, read How to Ask for a Raise (and Get One!) from your #Freelancing Client.

If you want to know why you should be gathering testimonials you can use on your website, read about The Power of Client Testimonials.

Corinne Kerston is a professional writer and blogger. She is also a mom, wife, chef, chauffeur, nurse and whatever else her family needs her to be at the moment. Check out her Kindle book about breaking into freelance writing, Start Your Freelance Writing Career: Everything You Need to Know to Get Started Working From Home. Connect with her on her website or Twitter.

Readability: How “Readable” is YOUR Writing?

Young Boy reading a book, and struggling to do so

Is your writing “readable”? How do you know?

To introduce the concept of readability, I have some more questions for you.

Have you ever used “big” words in an attempt to seem smarter than you are? Have you ever looked up a word in the dictionary . . . and then had to look up the words found in its definition?

I can see most of you nodding your heads. I can see a few smiles, too. 😉

Now let me ask you:

  • Have you ever wondered if the words you choose to use are too difficult for others to read and/or understand?
  • Have you ever wondered what others really think of your writing (whether it’s found in a blog post, an ebook, a novel, an essay, an article, etc.)?
  • Have you ever read something that was hard to understand (because of all the words you didn’t know the definitions to)?

I bet all of your answers to these questions are “yes.”

But . . . do you know what “readability” really is?

What this post on readability will do for you

This post will:

  • teach you what readability is
  • discuss some history behind how readability is measured
  • indicate the different methods for how readability can be measured
  • give you links to the free, online readability calculators that writers, bloggers, and freelancers should use
  • two additional articles you can read to expand your mind, and
  • it will also mention a brief announcement from Wording Well

You NEED to Consider Readability

Have you ever seriously contemplated the readability of your blog post, books, or articles, and then tailored your writing to your specific audience?

If you are shaking your head shamefully, that’s okay; most people don’t.

Perhaps you didn’t know what to do. Perhaps you didn’t know that you could check the readability of your text.

Perhaps – and this is the more likely option – you’ve never really considered what readability means, how it affects your readers, and how important it actually is.

If you are an author, blogger, writer, freelancer, student (or wannabe author, blogger, writer, freelancer or student), there are a few critical things you should know about readability.

Smiling Senior Woman Reading A Book

What is Readability?

Readability is the measure of written language that makes it easy to read and understand.

Readability tests, which are mathematical formulas, were designed to assess the suitability of books for students at particular grade levels or ages. They were also meant to save time – because before the formula were used those decisions were made on recommendations of educators and librarians who read the books. These people were taking books already written and figuring out who were the appropriate reading groups.~ Source: All About Readability

The tests were intended to help educators, librarians and publishers make decisions about purchase and sale of books.

Readability, however, is dependent upon many characteristics: age, race, culture, and education. The use of slang also plays a part in readability. I think we all know that each culture (heck, even each generation!) has its own slang words or phrases!

Slang

Slang refers to a type of language that consists of words and phrases that are regarded as very informal, are more common in speech than writing, and are typically restricted to a particular context or group of people. To brush up on or learn some American slang, I’d recommend opting to get 10 randomly chosen slang expressions from their database.  You’ll be amazed at what you’ll learn!

Of the 288 factors that were identified, format or design factors were found to be among the three most important clusters of contributors to making a text easier or more difficult to read.

Reading and Writing

One of the reasons I love reading and writing stems from my love for word. When I read and write, I get to be exposed to more words!

When I encounter a word I’ve never heard of, I look it up so that I can add it to my lexicon. I also try to use it correctly in a sentence.

These two practices are something most teachers instruct their students to do in elementary school, and, in fact, were taught to me by my teachers.

They have stuck with me throughout the years, too. I love adding words to my lexicon, and I love using those words properly. When I am writing, I often search for synonyms to use to enhance my writing. However, I try not to use too many “big” words, for two reasons:

  1. Most people won’t understand what I’m saying.
  2. Keeping things simple makes for a more widespread understanding. Most people are not university educated (like I am). Many people cannot read complex sentences. Some people cannot read at all. (Of course, those people won’t be reading this!)

pie chart showing how many people can read

Literacy Statistics

It is estimated that 17-20% of the people in the world cannot read or write. Read More