The year has flown by. Work is winding down. Christmas is around the corner.
Have you done your Christmas shopping yet? I’ve left it very late this year… Oops.
I have to say that as an adult, I don’t find Christmas very fun anymore (more stressful than anything). That said, there are a couple of things I like to do to lift my spirits:
Read a LOT
Buy myself a present
Mostly I’m just looking forward to 2023 and the fresh start that will bring. January tends to be my most productive month. It’s all downhill from there! LOL.
In other news:
Oh, the irony of my life right now. I took up running (Couch to 5k programme), trying to improve my fitness. It was going great until I injured my knee. Now, I can barely walk! It’s been a week with no improvement. So much for trying to be good and exercise.
It’s that time of year where I like to start planning my goals. The lovely Sarra Cannon put out a video with some excellent advice for goal setting. It’s a must watch!
Speaking of goals, the 2022/2023 YearCompass is out now. Filling this booklet in has become a yearly ritual for me.
My boyfriend recently undertook a massive project of organising his DVDs. He owns over 1,000 titles, and there’s not enough space in our small apartment to have them all out and on display in their cases. They filled one bookcase and several boxes scattered between our house, his parents’ house, and a storage unit. Now they all live in four 400-disk wallets, with their paper sleeves organised alphabetically in clear pockets inside lever-arch files. The DVD cases have been recycled. This makes my minimalist heart very happy.
I have moved on from my first draft of my WIP to the revised draft. Word count update: 12,690/120,000. I should be able to get through this much faster than the first draft. More updates soon!
Link roundup
Why Book Blogs Still Matter in an Age of Booktok [Book Riot]
I’ve been on the bookish internet for more than 15 years, and in that time, I’ve watched platforms rise and fall.
Why is Adam Driver the Hero of Every Romance Novel Now? [Paste]
Onto every generation, a new internet boyfriend is bestowed. You know the kind: the handsome yet not necessarily conventional figure of celebrity whose appeal extends beyond mere hotness.
Why Is Santa Claus Erotica Suddenly So Popular? [Book Riot]
Santa has always been a relatively nonsexual persona in my mind. But let me tell you, after reading a few of these stories, there is no going back.
I Highly Recommend Romance Novels If You're Really Going Through It Right Now [Self]
A friend gifted me Royal Holiday by Jasmine Guillory when it came out in late 2019, and when I finally picked it up in March 2020, I had no idea a heartwarming Christmas romance was about to change my life.
What I read
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
by Haruki Murakami
This has been on my TBR list for a long time, and I finally picked it up for motivation after I started running. I enjoyed it! It’s definitely more of a running memoir than a writing memoir, but there are still a few nice insights into his writing life as well. His new memoir “Novelist as a Vocation” is out now, and I’m excited to read that too.
Also read: Hinch Yourself Happy by Sophie Hinchcliffe
DNF: It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover
Currently reading: How to Build a Girl by Caitlin Moran, Chihayafuru by Yuki Suetsugu