Goooood evening, fellow bookworms. (Or morning. Or afternoon. Whatever floats your boat. Or whatever time zone your boat’s in. That’d be cool if you’re really IN a boat. Are you?? Let me know!) Well, that was an odd way to start a post, but here goes nothing.

HOW DID YOU BECOME A BOOKWORM? I’m dying to know. It’s different for everybody, and I’d love to know the story. After all, I do love stories.

I’ve heard a few of them – some bloggers (hi, Izel!) have only become a bookworm in the past few years (which I think is amazing because newbie bookworms are WELCOME. I hope to someday convert someone and bring them to the bright side. Mwahahahaha.) and others have been bookworms their whole lives. I fall in the latter category.

I’ve been reading for…. forever.

Wait, scratch that. I’ve been fond of stories for forever. Before I could “read,” I’d look in my picture books and make up stories to go along with them. And I always loved an audience. By the time I was three or four, I had some of my favorites memorized. (If You Give a Pig a Pancake and Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you See? were the very start.)

I think most of the credit belongs to my parents. They’re both readers and great writers (in fact, when my dad was twelve or thirteen, he began a story about an orphaned boy in the 1920s, which he still has!), so they instilled a love of writing in me from a very young age. The rest of my family caught on quickly. I have loads of pictures from baby albums of birthday presents – clothes, toys, and – guess! – BOOKS! I still have many of the picture books I was given.

In kindergarten, it was Junie B. Jones. In 1st grade, I loved Cam Jansen. In 2nd, the Boxcar Children was all the rage – and any American Girl book I could get my hands on. (My mom started me out on Kit Kittredge, and so began my love for historical fiction.) By 3rd grade, I loved any Middle Grade book I was given. I remember getting The Main Street series by Ann M. Martin at the time, and that was when I discovered one of my favorite authors! Eventually I met the lovely Nancy Drew, the baby sitters club, all of Wendy’s Mass’ books… I was hooked on books.

In sixth grade, I began my blog. From there I started reading books I’d never have picked up otherwise. (The Selection, Stargirl, The Ascendance Trilogy… and many others!) Right now, I’m fixing to read a book about a futuristic world where a cyborg falls in love with a prince – a year ago, I’d have taken one fleeting glance at that book and walked away. Buuuut Brooke, Izel, and Madi are practically virtually on top of me to read it, so read it I MUST!

So that’s the small story of my bookworm life. Along with reading, I naturally took a liking to writing, and I’ve never really found anything else I loved as much. Sure; I have other hobbies. (Well… not many… piano, sewing, and flipping out over various TV characters is basically it) but I know my passion and I see my future clearly. Whatever I do, I always want to be surrounded my books.

how did YOU become a bookworm?! really! i need to know! did a friend get you into books? did your family? by yourself? a particular author or book? tell me below.

I own a lot of books.

After typing that sentence, I thought it would be interesting to count how many books I do, in fact, own.

259.

I own 259 books.

If you don’t believe me, take a look at my bookshelf.

I’ve spent fourteen years building this collection, and let me tell you, those are my babies; my prized possession! If you asked me what I’d grab if my house was burning down in a fire? (Rest assured my family and pets are safe, of course)…

I’d look like that. ^ While hatching some scheme to save all two hundred and fifty-nine of my best friends.

Don’t get me wrong. I am a firm believer in taking full advantage of the library. My librarians and I are on a first-name basis and they tease me about the exuberant amount of books I am constantly borrowing. “Heading to the library to pick up a *few* books” is not a phrase I use often in my house.

However…  I believe there is value in owning books.

“When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.” – Jane Austen

Support authors. I dipped into this in my recent post, Supporting Authors, but it’s something I’m always talking about. Support the authors who put out books you like! If you’re looking for a clean romance YA book and find one (please tell me if ya do ’cause THEY’RE SO HARD TO UNCOVER!) buy it! If you want more fantasy and action, send the authors a note and let ’em know! If you like the sci-fi or fairy tales, go out and buy the books, because that’s your quiet way of saying, “Hey, I like this, and I want more of it!”

Build your own library. Re-reading books is important to me – and so is lending them to my friends! Although I don’t have a ton of friends offline who like reading as much as I do – grrrr – I love the feeling of letting my friends borrow books. (EVEN THOUGH I’m paranoid about never getting them back…) I also love going back to a favorite book any time I want. I especially love owning the first copy of a favorite book I read. (Though if I am unsure of a book, I borrow it from the library instead of buying it first off.) Besides, showing off my growing collection is fun! I can’t imagine what it will look like in fourteen more years.

That said… I’m fourteen. I have small amounts of money. (Especially now, as my sister and I are working off our debt to my mom… because… we broke her computer…) I have a $7 a week allowance (which is enough to buy an MG paperback, so I DO get by!) 😉 Plus limited baby sitting money. I have to limit myself with books! Which is extremely extremely HARD. YOU KNOW THAT, PEOPLES. It’s why I’m always on the internet, because you bookworms get me. At times, I feel like people online I’ve never personally met before are ten times easier to talk to – especially because you’re like ME and you get it! Resisting the urge to buy books is SOOOOO HAAARD.

Which is why used bookstores are my fave. Thriftbooks is my fave (an online used bookstore with $1 shipping!!) I use the library, but I am an official book hoarder, and I like to own them!

On the other hand – if I’m looking to support an author, I strongly recommend buying brand-new. Depends on the situation.

do you like owning books? what does your collection of books look like?

Recently one of my good friends from my homeschool group (one of the few I know offline who know about my blog… I get shy talking about it!) was talking to me and said, “I don’t know how you keep up with your blog. You post so consistently!” So I thought, “Why not write a post on that?” (And there’s a small tidbit from a post: “How do you come up with content for your blog?”) I betcha she didn’t know she inspired a post! So hi, Katie! *waves*

I used to be pretty bad about blogging. If you scroll back to a year, year and a half ago, I posted all of one or two times a month. It wasn’t until January of this year that I sat down and set a schedule for myself. I had been reading posts – “How to get more followers on your blog,” “How to grow your comments,” etc., etc. and all of them said the same thing. “POST CONSISTENTLY!”

Now, I’m still not a perfect blogger and I certainly don’t have a large following (I just hit fifty on Bloglovin’ – THANKS, EVERYONE!) 🙂 … but I do try to post consistently, and because of that, even if I don’t have many followers, I do have pretty loyal ones. I get lots of sweet comments and emails, and they make my day! I’d rather have a small following of loyal bookworms who care enough to write back, than a large following of people who I never hear a peep out of. Where’s the fun in that?!

So, in January, I decided that I loved blogging, and I wanted to do more of it! Beforehand, I’d write up a post in ten minutes and hit publish when I felt like it. That just didn’t work for me. (It might work for you, though, so go for it!) I needed to find a good schedule for my blog that fit well with my own schedule. At the time I didn’t know about a handy-dandy tool on WordPress that allowed me to schedule my posts so they automatically publish at a certain time, so I wrote drafts and hit publish in the mornings. I followed a blog that published on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and I thought it was a reasonable amount.

So I went for it! Thanks to the automatic-publishing tool, I don’t have to worry about getting online (because if I did I’d always forget, especially on Fridays – I have a bible study group and piano lessons!) and if I’m on vacation, I don’t even have to touch the computer. I write all my posts for the week on Sunday. If I’m being an over-achiever that day, I’ll write more. One day I had a lot of time on my hands and wrote posts for the entire month! (Back in the leisurely days of the summer, of course!) Sometimes the posts run out and it can pile up on me (as has happened last week and I told you I’d be on a hiatus. Obviously, that didn’t work out because I love blogging too much, and my system works well for me, so I’m writing this on Friday when I’m not busy!)

If I really don’t feel like blogging, or know I’ll be out of town a week or so in advance, I just send one of my kind blogger friends an email and ask them if they’d like to do a guest post for my blog! Guest posts are amazing. They attract attention to both blogs, and I don’t have to write the post. 🙂 If I’m on a blogging kick (like right now; I’m clearly getting a little rambly in this post), I write up a few, and I’ve got the week done!

And you know what? It doesn’t matter if I did everything that fit my schedule or followed a dozen blogs telling me how to write more posts. It all boils down to the fact that I LOVE blogging. I mean, I told you all I’d be away for a little while… and look how long that lasted! I just can’t stay away. 🙂 You make time for what you really want to do, right?

what’s your blogging schedule like?

Talk to you in the comments!