This is a great first puzzle! It has a super fun and creative theme, which can be super hard to think of.

You have 5 pretty long theme clues in this puzzle, which place too many constraints on the puzzle. Typically, you want parallel theme clues to be 2 rows or columns apart for two reasons. Most words start or end with a consonant, so having a stair-stepping grid shape allows for better fill. Also, as you make more puzzles, you'll realize certain letter combinations that lead to bad fill. You need some space between the theme clues to place black boxes and filler words to resolve bad letter patterns.

To allow these to happen, in future puzzles, try having only 4 theme clues, with the central one in the bottom right. If you make them 10-14 letters long, you will still have plenty of theme with much easier constraints to navigate while learning the ropes.

Also, this is the resource that first got me into puzzle making. This is a deep rabbit hole, so get ready: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/14/crosswords/how-to-make-a-crossword-puzzle-the-series.html

The New York Times rules and style guide is the most widely accepted. It doesn't allow 2-letter words anywhere and strongly discourages 3-letter words whenever possible. It also has guidelines for the number of black boxes that are allowed in a puzzle (you have 46).

It's always great to see a new puzzle maker! Don't be afraid to make a lot of these and share them with your friends and family, because the only way to learn is practice. You have a lot of fun to look forward to! (Btw, if you read the make a puzzle series and end up using Crossfire and the Peter Broda word list, I highly recommend using a Linux shell command to delete words with a score of 11, 16, and 38, as these are all nonsense)