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My Personal Story Of Using HeliumI have been using Helium for a few years now. I have always been interested in Creative Writing and stumbled across the site by accident whilst looking at setting up a blog. Well the blog never materialised the way I wanted but I started writing articles and short stories instead. My first short story for Helium was entitled 'Cars' and I still enjoy reading that one again today. |
I continued writing short stories and articles and I saw my Helium ratings and earnings rise each month. It was just pennies at first but it soon started to grow. Then I had my first article sold. I cannot say how excited you feel when someone actually pays you for doing something you enjoy.
I sold two more articles to a software website, both were each only 400 words long and they paid me $20 for them. Kerching! I thought I was on my way to riches. I started to relax a bit after that and my writing standards fell. Some of the articles and stories I wrote were not getting the ratings I was used to enjoying. Who said writing was easy.
I stopped writing for a while and just let the revenue shares from helium keep piling up. That is the good thing about the site. You can still earn a little money from your old articles on the site. Then one day the writing bug hit again. This time I decided to do something about it and enrolled on a creative writing course with 'The Open University'.
I ended up with a certificate and a qualification that helped me complete my degree.
So back to Helium and back to writing I went. I was only managing one or two articles a month, but hey, I was happy. The dollars were slowly rolling in and my creative juices were flowing.
Changing jobs and moving around a lot ( I was in the Royal Air Force) meant that I did not spend as much time as I wanted on my writing. Now things have changed. Last year I moved to Crete, Greece, with my wife. After 23 years in the RAF we decided enough was enough and it was time to relax. So here we are. A few months to settle in and I have now started writing again. Plus I have started a new challenge!
I have started writing a story that is rapidly growing in size. Inspired by the history of the area we now live in I started imagining the story based around the Roman invasion of the island. What started out as a piece of flash fiction has turned into a short story and is continuing to almost write itself to become a novella. Who knows, even a novel may arise from it.
If you are interested in reading the prologue to this story just click the link below.
I sold two more articles to a software website, both were each only 400 words long and they paid me $20 for them. Kerching! I thought I was on my way to riches. I started to relax a bit after that and my writing standards fell. Some of the articles and stories I wrote were not getting the ratings I was used to enjoying. Who said writing was easy.
I stopped writing for a while and just let the revenue shares from helium keep piling up. That is the good thing about the site. You can still earn a little money from your old articles on the site. Then one day the writing bug hit again. This time I decided to do something about it and enrolled on a creative writing course with 'The Open University'.
I ended up with a certificate and a qualification that helped me complete my degree.
So back to Helium and back to writing I went. I was only managing one or two articles a month, but hey, I was happy. The dollars were slowly rolling in and my creative juices were flowing.
Changing jobs and moving around a lot ( I was in the Royal Air Force) meant that I did not spend as much time as I wanted on my writing. Now things have changed. Last year I moved to Crete, Greece, with my wife. After 23 years in the RAF we decided enough was enough and it was time to relax. So here we are. A few months to settle in and I have now started writing again. Plus I have started a new challenge!
I have started writing a story that is rapidly growing in size. Inspired by the history of the area we now live in I started imagining the story based around the Roman invasion of the island. What started out as a piece of flash fiction has turned into a short story and is continuing to almost write itself to become a novella. Who knows, even a novel may arise from it.
If you are interested in reading the prologue to this story just click the link below.
I hope you will take the time to read a few of my articles on the 'About Me' page and if there are any comments you would like to make please feel free to use the 'Contact Me' form on this site or through Heliums 'Contact this Writer' link.
All comments are welcomed and I thank you in advance for reading my mumblings.
Ian Yates
Crete 2012
All comments are welcomed and I thank you in advance for reading my mumblings.
Ian Yates
Crete 2012