Blogging and M.E
ID: A graphic with a patterned background of cream, green and brown with the words Blogging and M.E written in the centre. There is also an illustration of a Laptop on the bottom right hand side
Hello Friends,
I thought in today’s post, I’d give you a little incite into my writing process and the “behind the scenes” if you will, of how I manage to write an article for my site each week while living with M.E and all the symptoms and difficulties that go with that.
This might also help to address one of the comments I’ve noticed over the time that I’ve been writing and Blogging as someone with M.E: How do those with M.E manage to write articles for their blogs/websites or write and post frequently?
The short answer and speaking from my own personal experience, I write articles with great difficulty at times and while on rare occasions I manage to get an article written slowly within a day, more often than not, I am working on the same piece over the course of a few days. Somedays I feel able to write at my desk for no more than an hour {sometimes less}, other days I turn my bed into my office and can pick up and put down my laptop as I feel able.
However, I have found a few things over the years that have made the whole process a little easier at times…
Schedule:
I’ve found that having a posting schedule has been really handy and helpful when it comes to knowing what to write about each week. I have a “Blogging Plan” notebook which I use to plan each month’s articles with ~ these are flexible though and sometimes I change it up depending on how I’m feeling and what I want to write about when I get to the week in question, though my Monthly Wrap Up will always be published on the first Monday of every Month. But having a general plan for each Month/Week does help and I like to try to alternate between health and book/lifestyle related content so I don’t find myself write very heavy themed articles each week. This also gives you, my dear readers, some lighter articles to read as well.
Being one of the MEA Champions has also helped with this as we are provided with a Monthly theme and a list of the Awareness Days/Weeks and any other National Days that the M.E Association want to highlight in a particular month. I make a note of these in my notebook and then I usually work in an article relating to the Monthly theme, if it’s relevant to my experience of life with M.E of course.
ID: A birds eye view of a white desk with a gold coloured laptop, a pen, and a notebook with a white cover and a black cat on it.
Flexible Routine:
I’ve found having a routine really helpful when it comes to writing and it was something that I put in place last November when I took part in my first NaNoWriMo to help me write more regularly. I have set days that I like to write on and these coincide with my precautionary bed rest days ~ Monday, Wednesday, Friday. I chose these days as the only other thing I try to do on them is shower. So I spend about an hour in the morning, starting from around 11amish, doing a little bit of writing. If I’m feeling like it’s a better day, I may do a little more writing after lunch.
However, you’ll notice this section is subtitled “Flexible Routine” and that means that if I’m experiencing a flare, PEM, just feeling too ill or my mental health is taking a dip, I’ll forgo any writing and simply spend the entire day resting up and doing small things to help me feel a little better. When this happens, it means that I likely won’t have an article ready to publish on the Monday as I like, but I’ve learned to be okay with that as nothing is more important than my health. Once I’m doing better, I usually spend a little time catching up and writing on days I wouldn’t normally ~ even if that’s just 30 minutes over a few days in a row. I do try to not write on the weekends if I can help it.
Flexible Writing Space:
As my main writing days are on my bed rest days, I find, if I’m able, being in my office at my desk just helps break the day up a little. However, as with everything else I want to do with M.E, sitting at my desk is very dependent on whether I feel okay enough and when I do, an hour at the most is all I can do ~ sometimes 30 minutes is enough.
On the days I feel okay enough to write a little bit but can’t face sitting at my desk, I’ll grab my laptop and turn my bed into my office. While I’ve often thought about getting a desktop computer again over the years, the freedom of having a laptop means that I can essentially write wherever I feel able to. I also opted to invest in a MacBook Air as it’s really light and I find it doesn’t feel heavy on my lap when I am writing from my bed or the sofa in the lounge.
ID: Photo of Louise’s desk space. It has a grey chair. A white desk with a laptop, cup, lamp and plant on it. a bookshelf on the righthand side with books and various decorations on it, including a printer sat on the top of it. The space is also decorated with lights and various prints.
Blog Graphics and Photography:
Photographs and graphics really add to an article but the process of creating them can be very energy consuming. However, I feel over the past year I’ve become a little more flexible in this area and that’s definitely helped in saving some energy. I no longer use my big DSLR to take photographs for all my articles; all the images I use are taken and edited on my iPhone 11 Pro. This means I can take a quick photo and then get back into bed and edit it straight away.
The graphics, like the one at the top of this article, are all created by myself using an app called Over. Again this is something that I can do while I’m in bed resting or even when I’m having a day downstairs as it doesn’t take up too much energy. I also have set templates for certain types of articles, which means I don’t have to create a new graphic, I just edit the one I already have. I then just iMessage myself the image and any photos and then save them on my laptop and add them to the article.
Drafting Articles:
Something else I’ve found quite helpful is having a few articles in the drafting stage. Though let me just clarify, when I say drafting stage, personally, I don’t mean I have a number of articles ready to be posted. I know some who manage to do this, health allowing of course, but I’ve never seem to be able to get a head of myself. So the articles I do my best to publish every Monday, have been written within the previous week.
However, I do find I can get a little a head when it comes to the graphics I want to use in certain articles, along with deciding on titles. So I’ll often have a few draft articles with titles and graphics before I start on the body of the article. I mainly do this with my Monthly Wrap Up articles as the generally keep the same format each month.
SquareSpace App:
I know this one isn’t applicable to everyone unless you use SquareSpace as your website provider. But I’ve found this really helpful since I moved my site from Blogger. I’ve never found a decent app that allowed me to use my phone or my iPad to update my blog but the SquareSpace App is absolutely wonderful! If I’m downstairs and remember I need to add something to an article or a title comes to mind, rather than make a note on my phone {which I’ll likely forget about} or have to use the energy to go get my laptop, I can simply use the App.
I did this a couple of week’s ago when there was a few new people join the MEA Champions and I wanted to update the article I had written about it.
So those are all just a few things that have helped over the years while blogging with M.E. Again, all of these are very much flexible and I have learned to put my health first because trying to push through and write an article isn’t worth worsening my M.E for.
So the next time you want to comment on someone’s article with “how do you manage to write and blog with M.E, I can’t do that!”, just remember that there’s a lot of planning, time and energy that goes into that article and also a huge amount of bravery. Sharing your story and difficulties with the world, isn’t easy but when it could help raise some much needed awareness, it’s worth it.
Stay Safe. Be Kind.
L x
