Hello ,

“The course of true love never did run smooth.” William Shakespeare

February: the month focused on love (and half priced candy on February 15th). This month we challenge you to fall in love with creativity. Too often we focus on word count, books sold, queries sent—but not enough on the fact that writing should be joyful. May this month be all about falling in love with your creative self. 

Ready to challenge yourself?

• Read a book in a genre you rarely read
• Go to an art gallery or see a play
• Watch a foreign film
• Bust out some paints, markers, pencils and let yourself play with color
• Try a writing prompt and see what happens
• Make some chocolate truffles for someone special (yes, YOU totally count) https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/homemade-chocolate-truffles/
• Tell us what you’re going to do to celebrate your own creativity! 

Ready to rock your calendar? 

We have so many great things planned for this month. We’ve streamlined and cleaned up our events listings so it’s easier to see at a glance what’s going on, and to help make our newsletters a little shorter. Be sure to check out the complete events schedule and get signed up for the good stuff: https://creative-academy-for-writers.mn.co/events

Ready to get social? 

There was a lot of interest in our session with Shelby Leigh on using social media for author promotion. If you missed it, you can watch the replay here: https://creative-academy-for-writers.mn.co/posts/book-marketing-book-marketing-on-social-media-with-shelby-leigh-workshop-january-2023.

If you’re thinking about diving into TikTok after all that inspiration, check out the session on how to get your first 1000 followers on Tik Tok with Sanaz Maghsoudi on Feb 22. Here's the link: https://creative-academy-for-writers.mn.co/events/how-to-get-to-your-first-1000-followers-on-tiktok-qa-with-sanaz-maghsoudi?instance_index=20230223T010000Z

Ready to celebrate? 

Be sure to share with us your wins in our online community space. Look for the Ask/Share Something tab in the sidebar, and post something with the hashtag #celebrate. We love to know what everyone is up to. Some of the things members are celebrating:

• Lena Gibson is celebrating the release of The Edge of Life, her first novel
• Carmy Stubbs took time to share her cover for ASAIRA
• Erryn Barratt is going to have a piece in a charity anthology: The Billionaire Fling
• Sharon Michalove has released the audio version of her book, Dead in the Alley 

And…drumroll please… our Creative Academy Guides for writers series is celebrating a new addition this month too! Build Better Settings: How to use setting to show character arc in your fiction by Eileen Cook & Crystal Hunt will be released into the wild on February 9! Have you pre-ordered your ebook copy yet? Print book lovers, have no fear it’ll be available in print too :) Grab your copy here: https://books2read.com/buildbettersettings

We think you deserve a shiny new book as a valentine for yourself 😊. You can check out the whole series here: https://creativeacademyforwriters.com/books/

Ready to show us a little love? 

We don’t need flowers or chocolates this Valentines Day, but we could use a financial boost to help keep the wheels of the academy running smoothly in the background. 

If you haven’t yet activated a monthly subscription, now is the perfect time to start! Click the link below to set up a monthly contribution at whatever level you feel reflects the value you receive from the academy. https://creativeacademyforwriters.com/contribute/

To all our members who are currently making monthly contributions of dollars and of time, THANK YOU. We couldn’t do this without you. 

xoxo

Crystal, Eileen and Stephanie

& the whole Creative Academy team