DIY Bookmarks

    There are two types of people in the book world: people who use bookmarks, and people who don't. Now, a lot of people call people who don't use bookmarks monsters. I'm not going to go that far, because I used to be one of those people who didn't use bookmarks (I dog-eared pages and also tried to just remember the page number, which worked about as well as you'd think it would). However, sometimes a bookmark is just not available, so you use anything: a receipt, a Post-It note, an old gum wrapper, a piece of paper. And when you do have an actual bookmark, it feels like a luxury. However, I started making my own bookmarks a while ago, and it's surprisingly easy and fun. So naturally, I decided to make a post about how to do it on the blog.

Supplies Needed:

• Paper
• This could be cardstock or just any kind of paper, but stronger paper is better
• Paper cutter, or scissors if you don't have a paper cutter (a paper cutter provides a clean, straight cut)
• Pencil
• Eraser
• Some kind of pen, marker, etc for the design

Step One: Mark the dimensions of the bookmark on the paper
    The bookmark can really be as big or as small as you want. Since I've made bookmarks before, I know the dimensions that I want to use. My advice is to mark with a pencil the boundaries of the bookmark, as shown in the picture:

Step Two: Cut the Paper
    This is fairly self-explanatory, but I'll still include some pictures:

Step Three: Design!
    Before you start designing, you should probably erase the pencil marks just to make it look cleaner. After that, it's really up to you. You can make designs or write quotes from anything or just leave it blank. If you're writing anything, it's a good idea to write it in pencil and then go over it in pen or whatever you're using. I've even used watercolor paints on bookmarks before, but it was harder to do than just drawing:

As you can see, this is a very simple craft that doesn't require much time orf supplies and is a craft you can actually use! Did you end up making DIY bookmarks? Let me know in the comments!

How to Explain What Shipping Is

    Happy New Year, everyone! Here's the first post of 2018:

    I think everyone can agree how awkward it is when you mention shipping, OTPs, broTPs, or noTPs and someone goes, "Wait, what? What are you talking about?" You look around, hoping someone will save you, before finally saying something like, "Uh, nothing. Fangirl stuff." (And then they ask what a fangirl is, and you sigh over how hopeless this person is). So this post is going to cover all of these things, with a definition and how to explain to someone what these terms mean. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, this post will help you get a better understanding!

Shipping: According to Wikipedia, shipping in terms of a fandom (I will cover that later too, I promise) is "the desire by fans for two or more people, either real-life people or fictional characters (in film, literature, television etc.) to be in a relationship, romantic or otherwise." 
   How to explain this to someone: wanting a couple to be together.

OTP: This stands for "one true pairing" and basically means the ship that you ship the most. I happen to have multiple OTPs, and you can change your OTP all the time (for example, my OTP used to be Chaol and Celaena from Throne of Glass but something happened to change my views).
    How to explain this to someone: The ship you ship the most.

BroTP: This is kind of like shipping, except for instead of wanting characters to be romantically involved with each other, you want them to be friends (although the term "ship" can also be used in place of broTP).
    How to explain this to someone: What I wrote above ↑

NoTP: This is the opposite of shipping: you do not want these characters to be together, either romantically or otherwise. For example, one of my noTPs is Feyre and Tamlin from A Court of Thorns and Roses or Hermione and Malfoy from Harry Potter.
    How to explain this to someone: When you don't want characters to be together.

Fangirl or fanboy: A fan of a book series, TV show, celebrity, band, etc. 
    How to explain this to someone: What I wrote above ↑

Fandom: According to Oxford Dictionaries, a fandom is "the fans of a particular person, team, fictional series, etc, regarded collectively as a community or subculture."
    How to explain this to someone: a group of fans all interested in the same thing. For example, the Harry Potter fandom is comprised of Harry Potter fans.

Fanfiction: According to the online dictionary, fanfiction is "fiction written by a fan of, and featuring characters from, a particular TV series, movie, etc."
    How to explain this to someone: when someone takes the characters from a TV show, movie, book, etc, that they did not create and writes a story with those characters.

Canon: What actually happens in the TV series, movie, book, etc. The author has confirmed that it has happened.
        How to explain this to someone: What I wrote above ↑

    I hope you enjoyed my definitions and explanations of these terms. If you think I was wrong or if you have something you think I should have included, please add a comment telling me what you think!

How to Get Through NaNoWriMo (Alive and in One Piece!)

    I haven't been posting because I've been so busy with NaNoWriMo -- that's National Novel Writing Month. Find more about it here. Even though November is over halfway through, that doesn't mean that NaNoWriMo participants are stopping: in fact, this is probably just making us write more (fun fact: I upped my goal from 1,667 words per day to 2,000). So how do you get through NaNoWriMo alive and with a finished novel? Here's a blog post on it!

Take breaks.
   Yes, yes, I know you're trying to write 50,000 words by November 30th, but you shouldn't run yourself into the ground trying to write 3,000 words a day or something. That will only bring you tears.

Take care of yourself.
    Please, get some sleep. Especially if you have a busy schedule or have school or work. And eat too. Just because you're trying to write a novel in 30 days doesn't mean that you have to neglect everything else.

Set goals.
    Sometimes you fall behind where you're supposed to be, and that's okay. If you are actually trying to finish by November 30th, you might want to make up for this by writing a bunch on a day when you know you can (I once went from 13,138 words to 18,000 words in less than 24 hours).

Plan.
    I'm not one for plotting out my stories, but I do keep a document called "Plot" that has any notes I want to make to myself about what's going to happen later in the story. I also have similar documents called "Characters" and "Settings."

Don't stress.
    I know you might want to, but it will only bring strife.

If you have writer's block, don't keep writing.
    Seriously!! You will not write anything good if you do!!

    Thanks for reading this post! It will probably be the last one until December. Now I'm off to go write more.

How to Take A Library Book Jacket Off

    It's a fact of life that buying books are so much more efficient if you get them from library book sales. But they always have stickers on them and the library book jacket isn't very photogenic. So, having recently figured out how to take it off, I made a tutorial video showing how to do it. Enjoy!

TBR Jar: What it is & How to Create One

    A TBR Jar? you ask yourself. What on earth is that? (Or maybe not. Maybe you already know what it is) 
    Well, as you might have guessed already, that is what I am going to explain. 

What is a TBR Jar?

    Remember my post So, What Exactly is this TBR? (if you don't, no worries. Also, you can click the name of the post and it will take you to it.) Anyway, in that post, I mentioned that there is no right or wrong way to make a TBR. The TBR Jar is just a visually pleasing, creative way of doing it.

    To put it simply, a TBR Jar is a jar with pieces of paper in it. Each piece of paper has a book title in it (the titles will be ones you want to read (your TBR). When you need a new book to read, simply pick a piece of paper out of the TBR Jar. Add to the jar as needed.

    I stumbled upon this idea online and decided to create one, then thought: This would be a really cool blog post! So as I go through the steps of how to make a TBR Jar, there will be pictures of mine. 

Step 1: Obtain a jar

If you're like me, this shouldn't be very hard. I just used an old Mason jar (which can also be used for canning). If you'd like the jar to be visually pleasing, you can find it elsewhere.

Step 2: Label the jar (optional)

    I just taped a Post-It note with 'TBR Jar' written on it to the jar. If you don't feel the need to do this, don't (in fact, I might remove the label sometime).

Step 3: Consult your TBR and write down the titles

You can write it on pretty much anything. I thought of writing the titles and then folding them into origami cranes, but I decided to just write them on Post-It notes.

Step 4: Add them to the jar

Enough said.

Step 5: Mix up the titles and draw your first one!

    Unless you don't need a new book yet. The one I chose was These Broken Stars. And remember, you should probably keep the titles you've picked to read next out of your TBR Jar so you don't end up drawing them again.

    

How to Put off Reading A Bad Book

Do you hate the feeling of knowing that this book is bad? Do you want to find out what happens to the characters but you just can't stomach one more badly-written phrase? Yeah, me too (it's happening to me right now, in fact). Here's what I do to keep from reading the book:

DNF (do not finish) it.

This one is probably the easiest and simplest option out there. If you abandon the book, you won't have to read it. Problem solved. But if you still want to find out what happens, or you hate the book but it's required reading, check below.

Read other books.

I hate that when I'm reading a bad book I spend more time on my phone because I don't want to read. So I end up reading other books too (just the other day I read 3 so I didn't have to read a book I didn't want to).

Bribe yourself.

I once had a book that was required reading and it was awful. I ended up saying to myself, "If you can finish this chapter, you get to read something better." Reading that bad book was torture, but at least I got through it.

Go slowly.

This one seems kind of obvious too, unless you need to finish it by a certain date. I once had a different required reading book that I had about 3 weeks to read. I read like 5 chapters in the first 2 weeks because the book was so bad, and I had to cram the rest of the book into one week. But if there's no date the book has to be finished by, this is an okay tactic. Although it might get annoying that you're still reading it after a while.

Convince yourself it's not that bad after all.

Okay, fine, this one probably won't work. But hey, you can still give it a try!

    Do you have other things you do when you're reading a bad book? Share below in the comments!

7 Reasons You Should Start A Bullet Journal. Like, Right Now.

    You might be wondering what a bullet journal is. To put it simply, it is a planner, but hand-drawn. Sound like too much work? I thought so too. But there are absolutely no requirements at all. You can put as much or as little in it as you want. There are a lot of pros of getting a bullet journal, and this post will hopefully get you to start one of your own.


It helps you organize.
One of the reasons the bullet journal is so popular is because it helps you stay organized. With the ability to write anything you want in it, it's like the mother of all planners.

I organize my tasks with bullet points.

It can become anything you want it to be.
The drawback of planners purchased from a store is that you can only put in it what it instructs you too. With a bullet journal, you can put in a meal planner, TBR, and daily reminders all on one page (if you have room). 

TBR in my bullet journal.

It's mind blowingly simple.
When you Google 'bullet journal' and click on images, you will get these elaborate pages full of intricate designs. Obviously there is a reason they are featured on the Internet! 
In reality, you don't really have to make it that complicated. All you really need is a blank notebook and a writing utensil. You can add drawings and highlight things if you wish, but you do not have to. In fact, in my bullet journal, I highlight things to make it more colorful, but I don't have a specific "code." I don't draw in it at all because I have 0 drawing skills.

It always helps to have an index so you know where to find things.

It's calming.
If you set aside a time to record things in your bullet journal every day (the beginning and end of the day works well for me), it is actually quite calming. At the end of the day when I record which tasks I finish, it not only feels calming to reflect on the day, I also feel a sense of accomplishment at what I was able to get done.

You can put huge reminders in and color them.

It helps plan ahead.
If you write down the major events at the beginning of the month on a monthly calendar page, you'll know when you have to start something big like planning a party, or that you can't travel a certain day because of an appointment. 

Small June calendar in my bullet journal.

It's not online.
Sometimes you just want to distance yourself from the Internet and bullet journaling is a good way to do it because it's all handwritten. In addition, if the Wifi ever crashes you can still use a bullet journal.

Heading for the 27th of June

It's easier to update than the typical journal.
Because you can get away with writing short notes to yourself about something you want to remember and things you need to do, it's easier to update. I don't know about you, but I always felt it was a struggle to keep a journal with daily 2-page-long entries because it just took so long. 

Simple reminder to post to the blog

If you are considering starting a bullet journal but don't know how because I didn't cover that, don't worry! I have a couple of links that I found that were pretty good starting my bullet journal:

• http://bulletjournal.com/get-started/ This is the official bullet journal website instructing you on how to get started
• http://www.thelazygeniuscollective.com/blog/how-to-bullet-journal This shows you how to make a very simple bullet journal and is one I found very helpful
• https://sites.google.com/site/bulletjournaling500/ Because I didn't necessarily say how you start a bullet journal in this post, I created a Google Site about it!

How to Get Over A Book Hangover

    We've all been there. You finish a book and close it. You sit there with your eyes closed and think about what just happened. And that's fine and good, and maybe even beneficial, but sometimes you've got to say, enough is enough! Especially if this is getting in the way of starting another book, or even continuing your daily life. Here's what I mean: sometimes going back to your normal day-to-day life after finishing a book that kept you up at night and scrambling to finish all of your tasks so you have time to read feels a little surreal. What is there to look forward to? This, my friends, is called a book hangover (in case you didn't know). They're pretty much unavoidable (unless, of course, you don't read). So how can you get over them?

You could always reread (maybe not such a good idea).

    But of course, that would not only make you think even more about the book and analyze it more deeply, it would also make it harder to climb out of the book hangover (trust me, I've experienced this after finishing A Court of Wings of Ruin. Also A Court of Mist and Fury). So I don't really recommend this type of thing unless you are aiming to think about this book for the rest of your foreseeable future.

Take a walk, clear your head.

Seriously, it is cliched advice, but it works. Walk your dog (that might distract you if your dog needs to be closely monitored lest they try to kill everything they see), bring some earbuds and listen to music, maybe just walk and observe what's going on around you. It will help take your mind off of the book.

Do not -- and I mean it -- try reading something else!!!

I cannot stress this enough! If you try reading another book when you're already on a book hangover, the book will seem awful because you are still thinking about that other book (unless you've got some sort of magical booknerd powers. If you do, I am jealous. Very jealous).

Give it time.

You know this book hangover isn't going away for a while, so just give it time. Step away from this book/series and go back to your normal life. For example, have you been binge reading a series and not had enough time for your family? Perhaps the first thing to do would be to call or talk to your family and make plans to spend more time with them. Or if you've been neglecting the cleanliness of your house, go clean it. After a while, this book will not be taking over your life anymore. At first, this might seem a little weird, but as you adjust, it will all seem normal again.

Continue talking about it.

Get it out of your system. Take pictures and post them on your Bookstagram (Instagram for books), Twitter, Facebook, etc. You might find someone who's been raving about these books like you have and you'll be able to connect with them about it. And if you're currently obsessing over a book that none of your followers have read, perhaps you'll get them to read it (this also happened after I started continuously posting about A Court of Thorns and Roses, A Court of Mist and Fury, and A Court of Wings and Ruin). Or if you don't have social media, just talk about it among your friends and family. It will either help or get you more obsessed. 

Write a review or mini review.

Even if you're not very good. Even if you don't share it anywhere or with anyone. Maybe writing a review will give you a sense of closure that the other things don't. 

Finally, when you are over that particular book, start a new one.

And let the cycle begin anew.

    I hope you liked this post on how to get over a book hangover. I invite you to share your stories or tips in the comments! Any and all ideas will be appreciated!!