Category: Life Update

Summary of the Last Ten Years

Posted on by Ellie Rose McKee

I’m about to turn thirty. I’ve been saying that, with increasing degrees of panic, since I turned twenty-six, but now it’s just ’round the corner – on Saturday.

That’s right. In a few days, I will have been alive a full three decades and will be starting on my fourth.

I’m still not sure it’s fully sunk in yet, but I’m at least freaking out less.

Part of me knows the angst surrounding getting older is nonsense. Numbers are arbitrary and nothing can be done about them anyway, so what’s the fuss? That’s the logical part of my brain. The illogical part is hiding in a cupboard somewhere weeping. So long as it’s not at the forefront right now, I don’t mind so much.

Socially speaking, I think the pressure put on women, in particular, to stay young (or, at least, stay looking youthful) is fascinating (not to mention entirely unfair and infuriating), but I’m not going to get into that here. It’s a discussion I’ve subjected my husband to several times already, and you clicked on this post to read about the misspent years of my twenties. I wouldn’t want to disappoint, so here’s a bullet-pointed list.

  • Ten years ago, way back in March 2009, I was living in Lincoln and had been for about a year and a half. I was nearing the end of my second year at university and swiftly coming to terms with the fact that I had picked entirely the wrong course. Despite uncertainty over what to do next, however, I was fairly happy. I had a good social life and was living in a decent place. 2009 was the year I met my best friend and was, up until more recently when I found love, one of the happiest years of my life.
  • 2010, by comparison, was hell. Continue reading →

End of January Update

Posted on by Ellie Rose McKee

I’m sure this will come to a total shock to everyone, but breaking the habits of a lifetime is a process that, apparently, takes a little while.

If you’ve read my earlier blog posts this month, you’ll know that I’ve been trying to be more organized and get myself into a routine. Well, results have been… mixed.

On the whole, good progress has been made and I’m happy about that, but I am by no means the entire way there yet.

With regards to my reading goal for the year, I’m sitting at two books ahead of schedule with a total of six books completed so far.

I am, for the most part, on top of the housework and am not being overwhelmed by a mountain of socks (or anything else).

I have re-joined Slimming World and lost a further four-and-a-half pounds this month.

I caught up on all my accounts and submitted my tax return which was quite a big task that had been weighing on me.

I haven’t been too bad about getting out for walks most days, even if it’s only to the local shop.

I have been sticking to a steady upload schedule for the Women Aloud NI YouTube channel and am on track to have the backlog of footage all online by our events in March. I have started planning the Women Aloud NI event I’m coordinating in March. Both these things remain to be finished.

I’ve been semi-successful in sticking to the general day-to-day routine I set for myself in that I am getting myself behind a desk and using the office for it’s intended purpose, but doing so ‘before noon’ each day as I had planned turned out to be a bit too much of a stretch. I still can’t really do mornings. I can barely do afternoons.

Being at my desk helps me to focus, but not always. The other day, I sat watching videos on my iPad as one I had edited exported on my laptop. That was fine but, when the time came for me to put the iPad down, I didn’t. I fell down a rabbit hole of the internet instead. I’m trying not to beat myself up too much about that, because some level of procrastination happens to everyone, but it is something I need to be careful doesn’t become a common occurrence.

Some writing, editing, and plotting has been done but not nearly as much as I would like. My hope is that I can get a bunch of other tasks out of the way tomorrow and find more time for my novel in February. Allons y!

A Year of Unexpected Things

Posted on by Ellie Rose McKee

I like to wait until the very last week in December before sharing review posts like this because, if you’re not at the absolute end of the year, who knows what still might happen? Prime example: two days after Christmas last year, my husband and I acquired a dog. This was completely unplanned, to the degree that if you had asked us thirty minutes prior to it happening if we were getting another pet we would have looked at you funny and wondered where you got such an idea.

Following on this theme of life throwing unexpected curve balls, at the end of 2017 I shared a post in which I said I had a new teaching job lined up for 2018 and had been put in charge of organising Women Aloud NI’s 2018 ‘in-train’ recital for International Women’s Day. Well, right off the bat, I was hit with the unforeseen circumstance of getting ill. I had to cancel my first class and the recital didn’t happen thanks to the train selling out all its tickets to eager rugby fans within a couple of hours of them going online.

January rolled into February, then on into March and I was still sick, facing minor surgery, but also on the verge of finishing my novel. Then, during CampNaNo in April, I took the final step and actually did finish it, which left me in the great position of having a writing mentor look over it in May. My husband and I travelled to Derry and I met with Felicity McCall who gave me really encouraging feedback.

I had applied to teach a second term at the Crescent Arts Centre and been given the go-ahead only for it to end up cancelled at the last minute due to not enough people signing up. I taught a one-off, day-long workshop and didn’t put in a proposal for a third term.

During this time, I also had my very first fertility appointment and began trying to lose weight.  Continue reading →

The Reality of Being a Writer in Poverty

Posted on by Ellie Rose McKee

Photo by Steve (via Instagram)

These past two weeks have been really difficult and, honestly, I’m feeling really low right now. You would think I’d still be top of the world since the wonderful news of my last post but, as often happens in life, good news was followed by bad. But let me rewind for a second, in case you’re still catching up:

Just over two weeks ago, I shared the wonderful news that I’m one of the lucky applicants to receive a grant from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland to help support me as I write my second novel.

As of today, I’m still waiting on that payment. What has happened in the meantime is that our dog got sick and needed to go to the vet, the vet fees used the last of our food money, we struggled to cover the basics of just bread and milk for four days, in the middle of which, my laptop died. As in completely dead. Unrecoverable.

Needless to say, not only has my attempt at NaNoWriMo stalled, but writing in general is not exactly going well.

I know things are not as bad as they could be — after those particularly bad four days I mentioned, my husband received a welfare payment, taking the pressure off again, and my dog is mostly better. Steve has been lending me his laptop, and the Arts Council money is still coming (I dread to think what I would do if t wasn’t!) — but, even so, I’ve been in a bad headspace.

There’s still a fairly prevalent stereotype of starving artists, and how they almost need difficult circumstances to help fuel their creativity.

Well, I say bollocks to that.  Continue reading →

February Update

Posted on by Ellie Rose McKee

For me, January felt like a too-long month but, despite the fact that it seemed to stretch and stretch, I never quite managed to fit in everything I had planned. I only finished reading one book (a novel-length piece of fan fiction) though I did listen to most of an audiobook, too. I finished it (Star Wartz by Patrick Tilley) in the early hours of this morning. So, here I am on the first of Feb. with two books off my 52 book goal for the year and five-thousand words written of my ten-thousand-word January goal.

I think it was getting sick right at the start of the year that threw me off. For about a week, all I could focus on was the physical pain I was in and whether I was going to be taken into hospital. The jury’s still out on that one. I may be sent back there tomorrow after I see my GP again, or I might have to wait a year – who knows?

On the plus side, after having to cancel the first week of my class, I started it a week late and it is going well. My task for tomorrow is to put in a proposal for next term. Now that my taxes are (finally!) in, I can really focus on it.

Maybe I can even get back to writing fiction after that. I certainly hope so!

A Long, Long Year

Posted on by Ellie Rose McKee

I want to write an update on life and writing and everything quite literally in between, but I’m having trouble knowing where to start…

Flicking through past blog posts, I can see that NaNoWriMo last year didn’t quite go to plan for me. After that, in December 2016, I tried to take a break. That didn’t quite work out either. I’d been so heavily involved in client work, I’d built up a ton of momentum and found the sudden stop incredibly jarring.

Next, the come-down happened. Burn out from doing too much for too long hit me once I finally stopped and took a breath. I think I allowed myself three whole breaths before New Year hit and I was right back to expecting the world from myself.

I wanted to hit 2017 running but found that I couldn’t go straight back into top gear having stopped the engine for a bit. So I beat myself up for a while, wrote a couple of stirring blog posts about how I was determined to do better. And then I got married, which of course was wonderful but also a bit of a whirlwind that left my head spinning. Months of building up to a single event can kind of have that effect.

Home from honeymoon, I told myself ‘this is it, time to be serious now, get back to work for real.’ So I threw myself into the Women Aloud NI events in March. I had a birthday, and then a little bit of a breakdown in which I admitted to the world just how sick my new husband was/is and how burnt out I was still feeling.

I carried on caring for him, and battling the government on his behalf, and trying to keep up the level of client work I’d been doing before, and trying to write and everything else. And the writing was pushed to the side because I didn’t have the time or the energy, and I felt worse and worse about that. (Writing keeps me sane, I swear. When I can’t do it, I really come apart at the seams.)

During that time – May until like September – client work became increasingly stressful and time-consuming to the point where I snapped and couldn’t do it anymore. I had pushed aside practically all of my clients to work on one main contract and it became too much, so I quit, leaving myself with no income from my business.

I actually stopped operating as a business somewhere along the line, knowing that I needed to focus on my craft as an artist.

The lead singer of my favourite band died during this time, too. A big part of the band that had got me through my teenage years without killing myself killed himself. It hit me like a ton of bricks. I could barely think, much less write.

Then a big relief came when my husband won his welfare appeals, and we finally were able to get the pet we’ve always wanted.

And then I got swept up in launching Belfast Writers’ Group’s two new short story anthologies.

And now I’m here, about to start NaNoWriMo 2017. I had hoped that I would be going into this year’s writing challenge with the backing of the Arts Council, but I have just gotten word that they have turned down my application for funding.

So, I’m going to redraft my novel anyway; not doing much client work or taking a wage besides. I am going to write and relax and try not to traverse any further into burn out territory.

Not gonna lie, I’m exhausted before I even begin this next leg of my journey. Please, please wish me luck.

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!