Every year, I get a real tree for Christmas. I go out, pick one out, stuff it in my car, drag it up to my apartment and decorate it with my childhood ornaments. This year, I started getting in the Christmas spirit early and decided to try creating a book tree I saw online. I knew I had enough books and it seemed easy enough to construct.

It was not easy. After four attempts, having built the tree only for it to be too short, too fat, too skinny or just not right, I almost gave up. But I finally got it on the fifth try.

Here are my tips if you’re looking to build a book tree:

• It really does take a lot of books. I have many, many books, and I ended up using almost all the ones I own.
• Setting the right base is key. I kept going back and forth on how wide to make the initial circle of books, and it was just trial and error to make sure I had it wide enough to have a solid base but not too wide to run out of books before I reached the right height.
• Stop overthinking and over-organizing your books. The first couple tries, I grouped my books be size and width so I could systematically start with the biggest, thinnest ones and work my way smaller and thicker. However, after looking at more examples online, I realized the construction tended to be more haphazard. So by my final attempt, I just used my gut to grab different sized books to build a tree that looked more organic.
• Add the lights. I only had one string of lights handy, but I really like the minimalist look just one strand of white light offers.
• Get a furry little helper. Ok, so Othello jumping in and out of the tree in progress was not super helpful. But it did make the process more entertaining!