Writing Through the Night

Aloud All This Week

Posted on by Ellie Rose McKee

In celebration of International Women’s Day 2017 – which is tomorrow: Wednesday 8th March – Women Aloud NI have once again put together a fantastic program of events. Below are just the ones I’m involved with, with many more listed on their website.

Feel free to come along – both men and women are welcome to join the audience.

Wednesday 8th:

Saturday 11th:

  • A Reading on the Train to Dublin! – 8am Enterprise Service leaving Belfast Central
  • Readathon at the Irish Writers’ Centre (this one isn’t open to the public)
  • Mass Reading – Outside the Irish Writers’ Centre, 3.30pm (please flock to this one if you can, it should be quite impressive!)

Catching Up

Posted on by Ellie Rose McKee

Taking a break from things can be great – it has been for me, the past few weeks (now that I’ve actually got a handle on resting!) – but there is the unfortunate side-effect of life carrying on without you while you’re gone, meaning there’s plenty of new things to come back to. There’s also the thing about everything taking much longer than you expect (it’s not just me who experiences this phenomenon, right?).

Point is, I’m only now starting to get back on track with things after my honeymoon. Catching up with reading, writing, client work, housework (god, does the housework EVER end?!), trying to maintain a social life, making lists… things like that (can you tell my brain’s already feeling fried?). *insert cliche joke about needing a holiday to recover from your holiday*

Anyway, that’s pretty much where I’m at: catching up. At the end of this month (March) I’ll probably put together a mega-post about everything I’ve been writing and reading since the start of the year (no, I haven’t forgotten and yes, I have still been keeping notes).

Going forward, there are a lot of events coming up that I’m taking part in (details here), so please check that out.

Peace and love!

P.S. As of February, I have now been blogging for ten years. How cool is that? Happy blog birthday to me!

Glow!

Posted on by Ellie Rose McKee

Meet Glo.

Glo is an artist. Or she would be, if she ever got started.

She has all the inspiration.

All the plans.

 

Glo gets caught up in doing lots of little, unimportant things.

Glo frustrates the f*ck out of her friends.

They can see everything she’s got to give, but all they hear are her excuses.

–

—

I’m gonna stop being like Glo.

 

My name means light. I have a coaster somewhere that says that. It also says that I have so much potential, I can’t be pinned down, and I never get anything finished. Well SCREW THAT!

From here, every time I get pissed at people like Glo, I’m gonna use that energy to go out and hit my targets and stop being such a damn hypocrite.

Yes, I love art. And photography. And animals. And precisely six-point-two-five million other things.

I know logically I can’t become an expert in all of them, so the logical thing is to stop and focus on one thing, maybe dabbling in other things along the way, and maybe giving something else my full energy and attention when I’m done making it as a writer. But I’m gonna be a writer first.

Now begins the season of quality over quantity.

Glo’s gonna keep me right.

Conquering Chips

Posted on by Ellie Rose McKee

Don’t be fooled by the title. This is not a post about dieting.

I know I set out some new year’s goals for myself here yesterday, but I’ve been thinking about how I want to develop my writing specifically, and none of them were really about that.

So, my plan, cunning and complicated as it is, is to write (at least) a little bit of fiction every day. Poetry and blog posts are great (I mean, really!), but I want to start chipping away at the big mass of novel ideas that are in my head.

‘You know how you conquer a mass?’, I remind myself, ‘One little bit at a time’.

More practically than that, though, I’m thinking of getting something (anything?) down in a Word document before I open my web browser for the day.

Yeah, I know, cunning and complicated it is not. Maybe that’s why it stands a chance of success. Either way, I feel the need to keep track of my progress, so I might pick up a diary or calendar to mark off as I go.

And, of course, I’ll still keep posting end-of-month writing wrap-up posts here. Let’s just see if I can make the total wordcounts a bit bigger!

A little gift from Day One – new short story: Blast Zone.

End of Year Reading and Writing Audit 2016

Posted on by Ellie Rose McKee

Before I let myself get too carried away with excitement for the new year, I thought I should wrap up the one that’s coming to a close. For context and comparison, here is my ‘year in review’ post from 2015.

Earlier in 2016, you might remember I carried out what I called a “literary audit.” Since then, I’ve been keeping much better track of what I write. It’s been good to look back and it certainly makes posts like this a heck of a lot easier! Anyway, without further ado…

This month I wrote 4,000 words. During the entire year, I wrote over 100,000 – can’t say exactly because, like I said, I only started taking note part way through the year (it was 95,000 words total, April – December). I do know I wrote 55,000 words of fanfic (January – December) and a hell of a lot of poetry.

December saw me devouring four audiobooks, a Kindle short, and a novel-length fanfic, leaving my books read for the year at 54 (off a goal of 45). Goodreads have laid all my stats out in a handy chart, here.

Personal Highlights for Twenty Sixteen:

Finally, 2017 Goals:

  • Get married
  • Read 50 books
  • Join the Society of Authors
  • Get a literary agent
  • and a cat
  • Take an official proofreading course

Also: In a bid to catch up on my ‘to be read’ pile, I’ve decided to not buy any new books for the first six months of 2017. I can still loan out books from the library, however, and I’m allowing myself to continue getting one audiobook a month during this time.

I am so excited for this!

On having difficulty relaxing

Posted on by Ellie Rose McKee

“A poem is never finished only abandoned.” – Paul Valéry

I’ve really enjoyed yesterday and today, spending Christmas with my partner’s parents, and tomorrow we’re off to see my parents. I already announced that in my last blog post, when I said I was logging off. The thing is, I’m not sure I really know how to have down time. Not properly, and definitely not for an extended period of time.

Now, I’m quite hard on myself. I know that logically, but it still doesn’t stop me doing it. I can spend whole days being busy – doing lots of really small things, spanning client work, housework, taking care of myself, and/or my partner – but when it comes to the end of those days, I feel like I’ve achieved nothing.

Productivity very much ties into my self-worth (again, this is despite knowing logically that there’s no point). If I don’t feel like I’ve done enough, I feel bad. Simple as that.

But where does relaxing come into this? Continue reading →

Logging Off…

Posted on by Ellie Rose McKee

This past year has been crazy, and this whole month has been crazy-busy.

Right now, I’m logging off for three days over Christmas. But I just wanted to wish everyone very happy holidays, wherever you are, or whatever your situation.

If you’re alone and you need help, know that there are people and services out there for you.

If you kinda wish you were alone? Well, you have my sympathies. Families can be… tough, shall we say. But you’re tough, too. You can totally get through this!

See you on the other side  🙂

My Shadow (Poem)

Posted on by Ellie Rose McKee

Recently, I shared a piece of flash fiction about shadows. Now I have a poem for you, on the theme. It was inspired by this video.

Now, normally, I shy away from prompts. I have so many story ideas, I already can’t keep up, but poetry’s different. Because it’s so much shorter, I can have an idea for a poem and jump on it right away. They don’t build up, so I have none in reserve.

Since I’ve been writing a lot of poems lately, and I want to keep that going, I have been actively looking for inspiration for poems. As such, I’ve found this site which is quite good.

But that’s enough preamble. Here is my poem.

My Shadow

Light slips through
the dark cracks
They are substance
in themselves
Forming a mosaic

Cold parts are next to warm
there is every shade of color
Everything that is me
reflected

My shadow is what I will
leave behind

NaNoWriMo Wrap-Up 2016

Posted on by Ellie Rose McKee

Four years ago, yesterday, I had the joint book launch for Still Dreaming and Wake. That was also the first year I won NaNoWriMo (and won it properly, by working on a novel and not just lots of smaller writing projects).

This November? Well… let’s just say it’s been very different, and not just with the many, many small projects, either.

Main point: I didn’t win. I got sick for three weeks and went on holiday (not in that order), but I also managed twenty-two thousand words and I’m really happy with that.

November =

  • 1 Holiday
  • 7 boxes of tissues
  • 6 blog posts (1,100 words)
  • 20 micropoems (800 words)
  • 4 bottles of cough medicine
  • 3 and half fanfics (17,000 words!)
  • numerous squares of chocolate
  • despair about a lack of client work, followed by…
  • a lot of client work
  • 3,000 words towards my novel
  • a partridge in a pear tree 

While I’m here, I should also probably get my reading update out of the way – not that there’s much to report!

Books Finished: Diary of a Wimpy Vampire by Tim Collins, A Choice of Emily Dickinson’s Verse

Books Started: White Night by Jim Butcher, No Life But This by Anna Sheehan, one fanfic novel

Books Bought: The Female Line: Northern Irish Women Writers

(Okay, so that was a little more than I actually remembered. Go me!)

How was your November?

Bright Spot in a Bad Week

Posted on by Ellie Rose McKee

I’ve been having a really bad week. And I know this year, in general, has been hellish for a lot of people.

Generally, I don’t have the best health. I don’t shy away from that fact. I’m in pain often and get sick a lot. But since I came back from my holiday? Wow, have I been bad!

This heavy cold has been going around – my partner got it before I did – but I have the added bonus of chronic sinusitis and asthma, which makes the whole thing worse. I’ve been struggling to breathe, and sleep, and lie down. Last night I coughed so much I threw up.

Okay, maybe I’m bordering on TMI territory here, but I’m getting around to my point, which is this: things have been sucky, but there’s also good things in the world. Generally and personally.

After a particularly hard night last night and having to cancel an event today, last minute, I woke up from a much-needed nap to see a new, unprompted, five-star review on the Facebook page for my business.

I also had an email telling me one of my poems has been accepted into an anthology. After submitting more pieces than ever before and not having a single poem or short story appear anywhere all year.

So, somewhat fittingly for this time of year, I am thankful.

May bright spots on cloudy days ever continue!