The Best of Vlogmas: 3 Ladies You Must Watch

As I start writing this post, I'm going to make an assumption about you, nameless reader, and that assumption is that you are an Internet-savvy sort of person. You are reading this blog, aren't you?

Now, if you're an Internet person like me and spend a significant amount of your free time on YouTube, you probably already know what Vlogmas is. For those of you who don't, let me explain: Vlogmas is the abbreviated term for a project in which people vlog every day until Christmas, starting the first of December. It seems that every year more content creators participate in the event and with so many videos out there, it can be a little overwhelming.

So I went ahead and narrowed it down to my three favorite people to watch this Vlogmas. Yes, I realize these videos don't represent the widest slice of of life (all three are British women), but these are my genuine favorites and the videos I look forward to watching every single day of Vlogmas.

1. Lily / LilyPebbles

If you're looking for the best of the more "traditional" Vlogmas videos (it was started by lifestyle and beauty vloggers), then Lily is your girl. She is a beauty and lifestyle blogger and vlogger and her Vlogmas videos share life behind the scenes. She works on decorating her new flat, shows her viewers around London, and eats amazing looking food. And for a cuteness bonus, the family puppy and her little nieces and nephews make regular appearances.

2. Jen / Jen Campbell

I have previously referred to Jen as the "fairy godmother of Booktube" and her Vlogmas videos are living up to that title. Author, poet, bookseller, and book lover extraordinaire, Jen's videos so far have included a bookish Christmas gift guide, a collection of beautiful children's books, and her thoughts on all of the books she read in November. My personal favorite has been her weekly vlog. As an aspiring writer myself, I loved getting a peak at what exactly an author does all day and, as Jen reveals, that's quite a lot!

3. Rosianna / Rosianna Halse Rojas

Rosianna has probably the most unconventional Vlogmas videos of the three, which is actually why she is one of my favorites. A Brit who moved this past year to Indianapolis, Indiana, Rosianna's videos seem pretty simple. She shares her love of vegan food, Taylor Swift, and cruelty-free makeup. She shares book and movie reviews as well as snippets of her ever day life. What sets Rosianna apart and makes her the unique vlogger that she is is her honesty. She is very open about her struggles with food, body image, and depression. That may sound dreary but, trust me, Rosianna is actually a breath of fresh air in my day. She is a deep thinker and even her daily vlogs include discussions about topics that most female twenty-somethings will find compelling and oh-so relevant.


Those are my picks for this year's best Vlogmas vloggers. Thankfully, all three lovely ladies are super organized and have created playlists for Vlogmas 2015, which I have linked above. Grab a drink and a snack because I expect you'll be unable to watch just one video. So happy watching and happy holidays!

October + November Reading Wrap Up

BOOKS READ

The Girls of Atomic City: The Women Who Helped Win WWII / Denise Kiernan 

The Red Shoes and Other Stories / Metaphrog

Black Blood / John Hennessy

We Should All Be Feminists / Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Slowly / November Playlist

Let A Good Thing Grow / The Hill and Wood I Met Up With The King / First Aid Kit Could've Sworn / The Brendan Hines Little Room / Norah Jones Wiser / Old Man Canyon Small Mistakes / The Brendan Hines The First Time / The Hill and Wood Heavy Storm / First Aid Kit

What I Learned from NaNoWriMo 2015

Today is the first of December, which means that another year of NaNoWriMo has come and gone. Back when I filmed my NaNoWriMo Tag video, I was full of inspiration and felt ready to seriously buckle down and get writing.

Unfortunately, as you can see by my stats above, I wasn't exactly successful. I obviously did not make my 50,000 word goal. I didn't even get halfway there! But I refuse to look at this experience as a failure, because I actually learned quite a bit about myself and how I write best.


1. I'm a writing marathoner, not a sprinter. 

I did my best writing when I had several hours, or even a whole day just to sit and dedicate to my NaNo project. It was a lot harder for me to get anything written if I was just sitting down at the end of the day for a couple of hours. I think this is mainly because it took me a little while to get warmed up and into the groove of writing.

2. I'm a method writer.

By this I mean that I found it easiest to write when I was totally absorbed in the world of my story. My story was fantasy set in medieval Japan, so that meant I was listening to a lot of Studio Ghibli soundtracks and watching Japanese cultural documentaries and anime. This might sound very weird, but I now know that it is difficult for me to write genre fiction while consuming other genres through movies or television.

3. I distract myself.

My worst distractions did not involve tv shows I'd rather be watching, games I'd rather be playing, or browsing Tumblr. Instead, my biggest problem was my own brain, which seemed keen to keep skipping way too far ahead in the story. This made it difficult to focus on the section I was actually writing and is definitely something I need to work on if I plan to keep writing seriously in the future.

All in all, I actually felt like I had a fairly productive NaNoWriMo even though I didn't make my word goal. Most importantly, I feel far more inspired and motivated than discouraged and hope to get the first draft of this novel completed by the end of the year so that I can start revising and polishing it into the detailed story it is in my head.

How did you all do with your NaNoWriMo goals? Did you learn anything about your own writing styles and habits?

The NaNoWriMo Tag

It's November, which means it's finally NaNoWriMo time! Just in case you have never heard of NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, it is a challenge in which thousands of people around the world attempt to write 50,000 words of a novel draft in the thirty days of November.

I couldn't be more excited to participate this year and plan on doing weekly update posts here on the blog throughout the month.

If you would like to join me and be my reading buddy, you can find my NaNo profile HERE.