Creative Check-In // March 2026

Some takeaways from Newcastle Writers Festival, a Spotify playlist, a TikTok series, and more.

It’s the end of the month which means it’s time for another creative check in to let you know how I’ve been coming along. I was hoping to get a couple of Substacks out this month but alas, I did not. I promise you the ideas were there, the posts half written, but not completed.

You’d be forgiven for thinking this means I’m a writer who never finishes things. When it’s precisely because I want to finish my novel(s) that I don’t want to be sucked back into productive procrastination. So when I found pockets of time to actually create, I spent that time working on my fiction writing instead of this Substack.

So far, so good.

Playlist

What I have done is create a Spotify playlist made to share with others in an ode to mixtapes. This is one of the posts I started and stopped writing. The idea came out of a post I saw on Threads where they asked what’s something people miss about the pre-digital age, and the comment that stuck with me was lamenting the loss of the mixtape, and the gifting of music and other physical media.

There’s nothing I loved more than being given a CD for birthdays and Christmas. Especially one that was made up of songs people wanted to share with me or thought I might like. We can still gift music, of course, but the way we do it has changed. I’ve started collecting vinyl records because there’s something about physical media that streaming has never been able to satisfy for me. But the mixtape has been fading, replaced by playlists we make for ourselves and not to share. I think we need to bring it back.

So I may not have burned this onto a disc or anything, but here’s a Spotify playlist curated by me for you of the songs I’ve been enjoying so far this year.

(Though for the sake of transparency, I easily could have just made a playlist of Mumford & Sons latest album Prizefighter which I have listened to start to finish at least 30 times. Trust me on this one, it’s so good.)

Writing

Writing has been happening. Please, go ahead and praise me. I’m proud of myself for it. In the previous update, I shared that there was a plot point in Something You Should Know that wasn’t quite right and I’d finally figured out how to fix it. So I’ve been spending time going back through the beginning of the manuscript to fix this. The story feels even more solid now and I’m really excited by it.

I’ve started a series on TikTok, Write With Me, where I film myself writing. I know, groundbreaking. But it’s become a nice little ritual for me and I hope other people feel inspired to stop scrolling and get writing.

Because of the rewrites, I’ve only added another thousand words, taking my total to 43,000. But it’s 43,000 words I’m deeply proud of.

For The Unrising Sun, I submitted a grant application for funding for professional development opportunities. Regardless of whether or not I’m successful (though I really hope I am), it helped to articulate just how much I want to tell this story.

My current plan: once I’ve finished a solid first draft of Something You Should Know I’m going to let it breathe before coming back for edits. During that time, I’ll start working more solidly on The Unrising Sun. One of the things I struggle with the most is patience and wanting to speed up the process, so having something else to work on I’m hoping means I give this story the time to breathe.

Oh, and because I am a Chaos Queen, there’s a young adult romcom I started working on years ago which I parked to focus on Something You Should Know which keeps itching at my brain. So I will very likely come back to that as well. But ONLY after I’ve finished Something You Should Know. Permission to gently bully me to stop going towards the shiny thing granted.

Also racked up another writing rejection for 2026 which brings me to three. There’s one I’m still waiting on a response from but have the sense it will be a rejection as well. Either way, I’m still proud of myself for trying.

Reading

I’ve been mostly reading Australian young adult novels this month and taking full advantage of Libby. If you haven’t used Libby, you must. It works similarly to BorrowBox in that it’s linked to your library card, but I’m finding the selection of young adult novels available on Libby is much better than Borrow Box.

I have so many lined up, ready to read, and so far have enjoyed How To Be Normal by Ange Crawford and Let’s Never Speak of This Again by Megan Williams.

I was only able to make it to a slice of Newcastle Writers Festival over the weekend, but I still stopped in at the MacLeans Bookseller set up to get Love Unleashed by Melanie Saward and Six Summers of Tash & Leopold by Danielle Binks so I could get them both signed.

Being the chronically online person that I am, I’ve been fortunate enough to develop friendships with many in the Australian writing community, including Mel and Danielle, so it was absolutely lovely to have the opportunity to see them in person and give them a big squeeze.

Learning

My little pop in at Newcastle Writers Festival left me thinking about a lot. I even wrote the below to share on LinkedIn (I know, I know, what a lame social media platform. But as a marketing manager of a B2B company, I spend a lot of time on there professionally)

I only managed to make it to a little slice of Newcastle Writers Festival over the weekend, but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the session ‘TikTok: Helping or Harming the Book’. It felt full circle that one of the authors on the panel, Melanie Saward, I “met” for the first time through TikTok and we’ve become friends. Same with Danielle Binks, who I “met” over Instagram and after years of talking online we finally saw each other in person this weekend.

A couple of things that really stuck in my mind and I feel are relevant to people like me who are currently working away on their manuscripts in the hope of one day being published AND to those who work in marketing:

• You can’t gamify the TikTok algorithm and going viral doesn’t always lead to sales.

• Publishing largely can’t explain why some things sell and some things don’t.

• Some publishers are looking at follower counts when it comes to deciding what novels to acquire–and sadly, largely, BIPOC authors are held to higher expectations.

• Lily Crozier, who both works in publishing and recently released her debut novel Vow of Eternal Night to great success, said she’s approached TikTok and Instagram as an “asset” that she started building long before she’d finished writing her book. It shows the importance of playing the long game.

• Lily spoke of how she got her book deal through TikTok. But it wasn’t through one of her viral posts. The post in question got maybe 2,000 views, but the right person saw it. Impressions and views are the least interesting analytic.

• A rising tide lifts all boats. One of the things I love about the Australian book community is the level of support for fellow authors. It costs nothing to shout out the work of others.

So in that vein, shout out to the novels of all the authors on the panel, including Clare Stephens who did an excellent job moderating.

Love Unleashed by Melanie Saward (and Making Trouble, the second book in her collaboration with Brooke Blurton is out today!)

Six Summers of Tash and Leopold by Danielle Binks (and Shakespeare in the Orchard comes out in July)

Vow of Eternal Night by Lily Crozier

The Worst Thing I’ve Ever Done by Clare Stephens

Music + Movies

I’ve covered music in sharing my above playlist. I also want to add that despite my initial reservations, Harry Styles’s Kiss All The Time, Disco Occasionally gets better with every listen. Shout out to Season 2 Weight Loss which feels like the song of my soul right now.

And a recommendation that covers both music and movies, I watched The Moment with my beautiful friend Amy which is a satirical look at Charli xcx and brat summer and honestly just further cements that I am completely obsessed with Charli and how she approaches things creatively. Even from a marketing standpoint, watching the rollout of brat and how it became a cultural movement has been fascinating to watch.

Television

I love, love, love good television. Which is subjective, of course. I recently finished a rewatch of The OC which I have loved since it first aired, though it’s somewhat frustrating to watch as it’s one of the best first seasons of television ever made, and yet the subsequent seasons never quite reach that same level of perfection.

Following that, I’ve started rewatching Friday Night Lights in honour of Michael B. Jordan’s Oscar win and because it’s been a while since my last rewatch. I still love it, and Coach and Tami Taylor are still couple goals.

I’ve been enjoying the Scrubs reboot and Shrinking season three (which if you haven’t watched Shrinking, you absolutely must, I’ve talked about my love of it before here). Turns out I deeply love Bill Lawrence shows.

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There’s another creative check-in for you.

I look forward to writing these each month and having something new to update you on. I’d love to hear from any of you about how your writing is going, or things you’re absolutely loving reading, watching, or listening to.

Until next time.