Here are the rules for accepting this award:

• Thank the blogger who nominated you and provide a link to their blog.
• Write a post to show your award.
• Give a brief story of how your blog started.
• Give two pieces of advice to new bloggers.
• Select 15 other bloggers you want to give this award to.
• Comment on each blog and let them know you have nominated them and provide the link to the post you created.

Introduction:

Thank you so much to Invisible No More for nominating me for this award! You guys should definitely go check her blog out!!!

How my blog started:

As those of you who have read my About pages will know (I feel repetitive haha), I had been wanting to start a blog for some time, but never found the right moment or the right amount of motivation to do so. I also didn’t know what I’d even talk about. It never occurred to me that other people would want to read about what I have to say regarding books and reading! And then I discovered bookstagram in March or April of last year and even though I was finishing up grad school (which was insane, because I was in an accelerated program) the motivation was suddenly there! And so I made it happen.

Advice to new bloggers:

You cannot let yourself feel disheartened if you are not approved for every single book you request on NetGalley or wherever when you start out! Keep in mind that everyone started somewhere, and everyone had to start off slow. Be patient and work on putting out good content (whether it’s blog posts on your blog, or photos on your Instagram, or interesting tweets on Twitter). Your following will grow, and because you are putting out quality content, the likelihood of you being approved for e-galleys, and even physical ARCs will increase!

The second piece of advice that I have is that new bloggers not stress out! Sure it’s good to put up blog posts regularly, and most preferably using a schedule, but don’t freak out if you don’t have time to write a meme post on a particular day, or if you don’t have inspiration for a review post and the deadline is coming up. Remember that this is a hobby and should be fun. Also, your other responsibilities should have priority anyway. Don’t put your homework, or errands, or bill payments, or whatever on the backburner so you can get that blog post up! This week for example, I focused on getting reading and reviews done after finishing my 9-5 job and other extra work. I had no time to write up any meme posts, and that’s fine (right followers?!…I hope, haha).

I nominate the following bloggers for this award:

Alex @ Aesthetically Alex
Stephanie @ Teacher of YA
Nazahet @ Read Diverse Books
Megan @ bookslayerReads
Lauren @ Two Birds One Blog
Austine @ Novel Knight
Abe @ Sky Blu Booktales
Sarah @ The YA Book Traveler
Jill @ Bookish Lionheart
Olivia @ Books Cats and Coffee
Kevin @ Bookevin
Ashleigh @ A Frolic Through Fiction
Resh @ The Book Satchel
Lilly @ Lair of Books
Britt @ Geronimo Reads

THANKS SO MUCH FOR READING!