Check-In > February

Monthly musings, memories & moments

This too (February) will pass…

I’m not usually a fan of the shortest month of the year. It tends to be our coldest month in the UK (although we’re blessed to be warmer here in the south) and the gymslip grey sky makes me melancholy.

But as I write this, the bluest of blue skies is sparkling outside my window, and olive green shoots are peeping out of the bulbs I planted last year, heralding the first day of Spring, and I realise how much joy February actually brought me.

Musings

Spending time playing Minecraft with my youngest as *ahem* research for my latest book reignited the internal debate about the challenges and merits of online gaming. I wrote about the lessons I’ve learned in Minecraft: are our kids just playing or learning?

Marketing is something I’d venture most authors would rather pull their teeth out than do, so to make life easier for my fellow writers I shared a step-by-step free book website build-along - you can literally have a book promotion site up in a weekend for free.

In on honouring our creative energies I mused about rediscovering my creative soul and slowly learning to honour my different creative energies when planning out my week, following the peaks and flows of each day.

Then I had a bit of a rant about how women ‘of a certain age’ are portrayed in books and films and how I’m taking a small, defiant stand in Why Grandma Jo has red hair.

If you missed any of these do pop over - I’d love to know if they resonate with you.

Personal Moments

One of the happiest moments this month was the launch of the Behind The Debut podcast. Using this space to chat with new authors about their journey and debut book (rather than the bestsellers that most podcasts focus on, understandably of course) has been such a joy.

The trailer and first two episodes are out now on Substack here - ignore the two posts that aren’t podcast episodes, I have no idea how to remove them - or you can listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Pocket Casts (if you prefer to listen on another platform let me know and I’ll add it there too).

I mentioned last month how much I was enjoying pootling about in my notebook and sketchbook just being creative and that’s naturally evolved into picking up my watercolours again.

I’m getting so much inspiration from The Time Foragers Club with Helen C Stark and Draw Your World with Samantha Dion Baker - I highly recommend subscribing if creative journaling is your thing - and other artists including the fabulous Impressionist painters at The Courtauld Gallery (see memories below).

I do want to spend more time playing with shape and form and developing my mark-making in March, so I’ve signed up for Adebanji Alade’s Sketch Week and a Saturday sketching workshop with the Royal Academy of Arts that I literally can’t wait for.

Writing moments

I’ve now outlined 17 chapters of my next book - the longest I’ve spent outlining so far! This final book in the Rescue Quest middle grade adventure trilogy has multiple plot lines and making sure they come together seamlessly is proving challenging.

I’m really enjoying seeing the story develop at a high level though, and hopefully all the planning will make it easier in the writing stage. I’ll let you know if that’s true!

I also had an epiphany about what success means for me as an author after reading this post from Shira at The Aspiring Writer, where she asks “are you writing to ‘make it’?”.

I’ve always been a goal-setter, putting pressure on myself to achieve more, but when I took a step back and considered this from a traditional ‘successful author’ point of view, the key word that jumped out at me was pressure.

Pressure to write more books, pressure for each to be as good if not better than the last, pressure to write to a deadline. That kind of external pressure has the ability to suck the joy right out of writing.

It might seem like a small thing, but for a recovering perfectionist who has always thrived on ‘pushing’ energy, realising that I can allow success to mean writing books just because I LOVE writing books, because I love crafting characters and stories, was a beautiful moment this month.

Reading moments

How To Be Enough by Ellen Hendrikson - mentioned last month but I’m allowing myself to work through this one slowly to unpack my perfectionism. I still want to bury my face in my hands with each new chapter but I’m trying to be kind to myself.

Blue Moon by

Kate Tremills

- finished this modern Greek mythology adventure set in Manhattan and rated it ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐. You can read my review on Amazon here. Can’t wait for book two!

I’ve downloaded samples for The Thorn Necklace: Healing Through Writing and the Creative Process by Francesca Lia Block and Reading Like A Writer by Francine Prose — but I’ve left some space in my TBR pile for two upcoming ARC reads from my author pals:

Someone Like Me by Sara Elisabeth (her first book in this dark romance series; Someday Away was incredible).

Atonement by VE Huntley (book two in her brilliant paranormal dark romance series - book one is here).

Some of the Substack articles I’ve enjoyed this month:

Helen C Stark’s book binding process and Plein Air challenge review and Winter in Paris Drawing session on The Time Foragers Club - the perfect gifts for my creative heart

These wise words about how Not every dream is meant to come true from Kate at Joyful Creating

Jacinta Marshall-Crouse’s brilliant ai short story Eclipse - a scary look into the future

Amie McNee’s honest and insightful post What am I doing to launch my latest book and the brilliant We need men’s art

Kern Carter’s challenging post The Bell Jar is not an aesthetic

This joyous conversation between Read Yourself Happy author Daisy Buchanan and Caroline Donahue on the Book Alchemy podcast

Memories

The moon; my tarot card for this month, Bella & Ziggy being cute, the gorgeous Cicchetti in Covent Garden, three of my favourite impressionist/post-impressionist paintings from the Courtauld Gallery by Roger Fry, Paul Cezanne and Claude Manet, Spring arriving in the UK

And that was February.

Thanks for being here, friends.

- Michelle 💙

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