How To Create A Personal Retreat That Is Just For You

There are a lot of us out there that have a need for a space that just belongs to us. Whether we need it to work from home, or we just need somewhere to go to at the end of the day to help relieve our stress. The one problem most people come across when it comes to creating something for them is both a lack of space or a lack of inspiration. In today’s post, we are going to be looking at a few things you may want to consider if you want to create a space that belongs to only you.

Blog Tour: Wilder Girls by Rory Power

Happy Tuesday booklovers. Hope you are surviving this turbulant weather. Today I am the second stop on the blog tour for the Wilder Girls. Rory has kindly shared her writing process as part of my stop today, so one for all you budding writers out there.

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Whenever I get to talk about my writing process, I’m always a little bit torn between two answers. The first is the Instagram version, wherein everything is organized and beautiful and easily photographed. My Instagram self works at her desk, alone and in silence. She makes her own coffee when she wakes up with the sunrise and wears beautiful sweaters as she stands at the window thinking beautiful thoughts. 

The second answer is the real version, wherein everything is chaos. My real self cannot work at home, lest she immediately fall asleep or start playing a video game. She stays up excruciatingly late, wakes up just before noon, and wears the same sweater four days in a row as she lies on her couch thinking about The Bachelor.

Once I can be pried off my couch, I rely on two things to help me get a book done - Pinterest, and a particular coffee shop near my house where they know me well enough to not be startled by the agonized facial expressions I make when I’m writing. 

To start a project, I need to have a visual sense of the book, which is where Pinterest comes in. The algorithm has learned my tastes so precisely that my home page is always full of ominous trees, modern architecture and threatening sentences handwritten over pictures of abandoned small towns. Once I’ve put together a board that suits the project, I put a single song off my Spotify on repeat and camp out at my local coffee shop to start writing a first draft.

Working in the same shop over and over keeps me in the same headspace, which helps me keep the mess that is my first draft consistent. I pick a different table for each project: for Wilder Girls edits, I sat in the middle of the shop, and for my second book, Burn Our Bodies Down, I sat in the very, very back, near the fire exit just in case the draft went so poorly that I needed to flee. These are the sort of habits and routines that help me trick my brain into focusing, which is not something it does very well without help. 

And that’s really the best advice I can give for anyone working on their own writing - learn what your brain hates, and then trick it into doing it anyway. Maybe someday I’ll be able to be my Instagram self, but until then, I’ll be in the coffee shop, switching tables every few months and daydreaming about new sweaters. 

A big thank you to Rory for stopping by! I cannot wait to read the Wilder Girls. Order your copy below:

Wilder Girls

Followers by Megan Angelo Blog Tour

The synsopsis for Followers instantly piqued my interest when I read it as we are in a day and age where our success is largely determined by the amount of followers we have. Nearly everyone wants to be insta famous and some will go to more extreme lengths than others to get there....

How to get your life in order right now

Here we are in 2020, the start of a new year, and usually the perfect time for some much-needed reflection and some goal making. Those things you've been putting off or keep saying you're going to do, now is the time to do it. First up, get a plan of action together.  Getting your life in order isn't always an easy task and it does involve making the right decisions and trying to be as positive as possible moving forward. There are a lot of things to think about here, and the more you can do to get this right, the better. Read on for some of the best hacks you can use to take charge of your life and promote positivity today.

The Choice by Claire Wade Blog Tour

A belated Happy New Year all! I am excited to be sharing my first book review and read of the year, which I have to say has been an absolute cracker. I could not put this one down! Find out why this is one for the TBR pile below.