Am I crazy to think I could write a book?
I’m 33F, a new mom, and lately I can’t stop thinking about writing.
When I was a child, I was exceptionally creative. My imagination was honestly wild. I could build entire worlds in my head: characters, relationships, plots, backstories, everything. I lived in those worlds constantly.
Then life happened. My parents went through an incredibly rough, even violent period, and it left me carrying a lot of trauma and stress for years. As the eldest daughter with two younger siblings, I became the mediator, the fixer, the emotional support system for everyone. I submerged myself into work and responsibilities because it was easier than dealing with myself.
I went to university and studied Political Science, which I genuinely loved, but it has absolutely nothing to do with creativity. Then I did my master’s. Then work took over, and I worked my ass off for 10 years to become a VP at the company I work for. Throughout that time, family issues involving everyone except me, even my siblings, took over. Survival took over.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m okay now. I have a partner who was with me through all of it. He is my rock, and honestly, without him I think I’d be as insane as the rest of my family. We also live far away from everyone now. But somewhere along the way, that creative part of me just disappeared. Or maybe it just went dormant.
Last year I got pregnant, and now I have this beautiful baby, and for the first time in almost 18 years I slowed down. I stopped getting dragged into everyone else’s problems. I stopped caring so much about what everyone in my family was doing. I had a break from work, and I was enjoying my time at home with my baby and partner. I also started reading again obsessively, mostly as a way not to think about my family.
And suddenly… my imagination came back.
Then ideas started appearing out of nowhere. A random walk, a conversation, a TikTok dance or random video, a song, seeing two people interact somewhere, passing an interesting place, and suddenly my brain would create entire stories around them.
I started writing the ideas down.
Now I have this whole romance series in my head, multiple books focused on different couples, all connected in one universe. The trope itself exists, but I genuinely think I have a twist on it that no one has used before, at least from everything I’ve found after searching extensively. Then my brain moved into romantasy too, and suddenly I have another entire universe forming with magic, politics, relationships, history, all of it.
The thing is… I’ve never done creative writing before. I never took classes. I never studied writing. I was never even particularly interested in writing or reading until recently. I’m also not a native English speaker, even though I’m C2 and English is the language I studied in, work in, and honestly feel most comfortable expressing myself in.
But the ideas won’t leave me alone.
It feels like some buried part of me woke back up after years of just surviving.
I do plan to go back to work full-time in September. My work is not related to creativity or even my major, but I like it. Also, by 40 I’d like to get a PhD, partly just because I can and partly because I’m still petty toward the people who called me stupid once upon a time (I’m a Cancer, iykyk). Maybe I could even teach at a university someday too.
I’m ambitious and I get things done no matter the level of stress or how much I have on my plate, but writing is the one thing I feel genuinely hesitant about.
So I guess I’m asking: am I completely delusional to think I could actually write a real book without any prior experience while also having a baby, a full-time job, and an actual life? Maybe even an entire series someday? Or has anyone else discovered creativity later in life and actually done something with it?