What I’ve been up to November 🖋 NaNoWriMo Wrapup & Uni Stress

Hello fellow bookworms 🖋 November has been a wild ride and was probably one of my least favorite months, despite it getting cold and me getting all festive. It just was a lot in terms of anxiety and getting overwhelmed, as coursework and NaNo kept me so busy and stressing out, that I often had no idea what to do first, because there was SO much to do! I really hope December will be more quiet and without as much stress, but we’ll see how it goes. Nevertheless I’m SO excited for Christmas!!!

Important Note: I have combined my monthly wrapup with my NaNo wrapup as I currently really didn’t have the time and capacity to write two completely different posts, like I originally planned to. I did a very detailed day-by-day documentation of my first two weeks of NaNo, but that simply wasn’t possible for the rest of the month, as the updates took up a lot of my time that I couldn’t keep up with any longer. However, I still wanted to do a wrapup and update for you, so I have included my NaNo Wrapup under the point Life Stuff, so you can find it there, if you want to read it first (or only the wrapup, whatever you desire)!

What I read in November  🖋

Reading wise this month has been a lot slower than the previous ones, which you can see when you look at the number of books I read. Don’t get me wrong, I still read a lot (things like that are very relative and different for everyone in general), just not as much as I did the last months, which I actually don’t mind. I was on a reading high during my semester break and I knew I wouldn’t be able to (and want to) read more than 15 books per month when life got going again. This month I read 6 books, something I’m happy with, even if my reading pace was a lot slower than usual. I was very much occupied by NaNo, university and keeping up with the blog, so there was often no time to prioritize reading.

In terms of rating this month was actually not as good as the other months of the year, as I didn’t have as many ratings above 4 stars than before. I did have lots of 3 star reads, which means I enjoy them, but at the same time I just wasn’t completely blown away. Than there’s a rare 2 star rating, sadly for an Arc I was excited for 😱 However, I did finally start my reread of Harry Potter! ✨

Library Books 📖

1. Love, Hate and Other Filters (Samira Ahmed) ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

2. George (Alex Gino) ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

3. The Belles (Dhonielle Clayton) ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

Tome Topple 📚

Tome Topple hasn’t been at the best times for me this year, that’s for certain, as I’m always busy 😅 I only aimed to read 1 book for the Readathon, because I knew I would like not get to my second option due to not having as much time and also having to tackle some overdue Arcs that would expire soon! I was right with my judgment as I only managed to read The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue during Tome Topple. I was pretty happy with that actually, as I had wanted to read this book for a while now and I finally pushed myself to actually read it!

4. The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue (Mackenzie Lee) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Other Books 🌺

5. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (J.K. Rowling) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (Reread)

6. Hearts Unbroken (Cynthia Leitich Smith) ⭐️⭐️.5 (Arc)

Average Rating ⭐ 3.4

Favorite Book 💕

What I posted in November 🖋

     

In the Bookish Community

For this section of my wrapup I’m linking up with the Favorite Blog Posts of the Month Meme that has been created by Kristin @ kristinkravesbooks to showcase our favorite blogs of the month!

• 6 Favorites I read thanks to blogging & Blogger Shout Outs Part 1 & Reacting Unpopular Bookish Opinions & Announcing Blogmas 2018/ & 29 Blogmas ideas (Swetlana 🌺 thecaffeinatedbookwormlife)
• How I Rate my Books & NaNoWriMo Update: Writing, Editing, Screaming  (Marie 🌺 drizzleandhurricanebooks)
• A Call to Action regarding New Adult (Kat 🌺 novelswaffles)
• The Mood Reader Challenge 2019 (Dani 🌺 perspectiveofawriter)
• Sexist Tropes and Books that Smashed Them (Marta 🌺 thecursedbooks)
• 5 Ways that I miss books (Evelina 🌺 Avalinahsbooks)
• Reacting to bad writing advice: fight me Jonathan Franzen (Margaret 🌺 weirdzeal)
• NaNoWriMo Update: Introducing my Characters (Beth 🌺 readingeverynight)
• NaNoWriMo 2018: Pantheons & Angsty Characters (Camilla 🌺 readerintheattic)
• Writing Life: Sharing your work & NaNoWriMo Update: Why I stopped after one week (Kat 🌺 lifeandotherdisasters)
• 5 Lovely Quotes about Autumn & 10 Lovely Books about Autumn (Aurora 🌺 auroralibrialis)
• NaNo Day 15: Tips for getting unstuck & NaNo Day 22: The Rising Author Tag  & NaNo Day 28: The Final Dash  (Sophie 🌺 sophiexli)
• Bloggers Choice: Best Books of 2018 (Marija 🌺 insidemylibrarymind)
• Why living in my Top 5 bookish worlds would be a bad idea (Sophie 🌺 bewareofthereader)
• Book Recommendations: 5 Books your TBR needs (Lily 🌺 sprinklesofdreams)
• Book Recommendations for rainy days (Naty 🌺 natysbookshelf)
• Planning my bookish BuJo (Mel 🌺awordandawhisper)
• Weekend Aesthetic: Truthwitch (Pauliina 🌺 bookaholicdreamer)
• NEWT Readathon (Sophie 🌺 blameitonchocolate)

Life Stuff in November 🖋

What happened with NaNoWriMo?

Basically I won NaNoWriMo but it was very hard-won, as the last two weeks had been a struggle and I have no idea how I came so far, as due to university (see below), my life had been so stressful and full of anxiety too. Writing was very difficult for those reasons and I honestly had to put in twice as much effort as in any other year. I have to say that this time was my worst time doing NaNo, because of feeling so overwhelmed and doing it non traditionaly. It’s a bit sad as I had such a blast last year, but this year’s NaNo experience is just very on brand with how my year has been going in general. In the future I will never ever use Nano to outline ever again, because it was so difficult to brainstorm and use all that creative energy to figure out my story – something I talked about in my weeks 1-2 update. I didn’t have the time to outline before NaNo and I thought I was being clever by using naNo to outline, but next time I will be making sure to have my outline ready by November 1st, as writing with my outline is so much better. This time it just felt like every word was a fight and the words came so difficult. I actually have no idea if I will be able to do NaNo next year, as I have my Bachelor thesis to write (another thing I’m not looking forward to, more in my 2018 post, stay tuned), but I will be doing Camp NaNo in April!! (with my hard-won outline)

I got a bit overwhelmed with university. I already talked about my statistics classes last wrapup, but they are still a lot of work and so time intensive, it really got me very stressed this month. I feel like the workload this semester is so much more than in any other semester before (idk why, I did have lots to do last semester as well) and this is only for one exam that I’m taking. (I still stand by what I said: 5 statistic classes is an unreasonable amount, especially as I already did that for my other subject) I have a long list of stuff to do each week in order to keep up with the classes (which I want to, it’s never a good idea to fall behind, as then you’ll be buried under a mountain of work), from reading the texts, to revising what we did in class to the exercises we have to do. Then I also recap the content and put it in mind maps/on flashcards/in my notes, so I have my material together that I can use to later learn all the content. I could skip out on that, but I want to keep up with getting my study material together now, so I don’t have tp panick and do all that later when the exam approaches. Still it’s a lot of work and I’m not the best with not stressing out due to anxiety, so even little things (and especially getting overwhelmed) can set me off.

Looking Ahead: December

For December I’m actually not going to share a TBR, as I’m going to be participating in a lot of Christmas themed Readathons (that span most of the month) and I will share that TBR with you very soon! Apart from that I really hope to have a good December and be able to enjoy the festive time! University is still a lot, but I’m actually kind of relieved that I won’t have the daily NaNo word count to hit. As much as I love NaNoWriMo, it has been a struggle last month (as I said before) and took up so much time of my day, that I want to use for reading and blogging again! Now would also be a good time to announce that I’m doing BLOGMAS this year, so I have lots of festive posts planned!

Goals

• Have a good Christmas time
• Work and Sort through all I’ve written during NaNo
• Keep up with my coursework

What was your favorite book this month? Has anything exciting happened in your life? Are you excited for Christmas? How did you during NaNo? 🖋