I've been sporadically creating crosswords for a friends and family for two or three years. I usually try to make themes that relate to recent experiences or shared interests, so the theme answers aren't usually to clever or tricky, although they may be puzzling in the sense that they can be inside references. The same applies to my clues - to date, since I've only been sharing puzzles with people I know, some of the terms and clues have been more specific to niche interests than would probably be appropriate for a general audience. I create the crosswords by hand on graph paper and come up with the fill by myself, so my process is a bit chaotic and I have yet to perfect my word choice - I usually still end up with a couple of unsatisfactory terms. But, it's fun!