Creativity is a funny creature. You can take a teeny tiny sparkle, and suddenly it grows into a whole project in your head. Then you have to choose whether you are going to follow that path into the imaginary world you are creating, or whether you are going to let it be.
I decided to follow the sparkle.
Now I am standing in the middle of a forest, a little bit confused.
Yesterday, I started writing the first story set in a place called The Round Forest. It has lived in my mind for years, but it never came into being. Not because the idea was missing, but because I have always been insecure about writing.
As a child, I had very severe dyslexia. It was so bad that my teacher thought I was faking it, that I simply did not want to learn to read. Because of that, I had to repeat the first grade. That was not my fault. It was the fault of my teacher.
Later, in ninth grade, I had a very strict Finnish language teacher. She was all about grammar, rules, and structure. The Finnish language is complex, and I never learned the rules properly. What I was good at was writing stories.
Whenever we had an assignment where we were simply told to write, I was completely in my element. I could let my imagination run wild and create something vivid and alive. But because we wrote by hand, and because of my dyslexia, my commas, punctuation, and structure were all over the place. When I got my papers back, they were covered in red ink.
Even when the story itself received a good grade, all those red markings taught me something else. They taught me that I was not good enough.
At the end of ninth grade, my teacher had one-on-one conversations with everyone. When it was my turn, she surprised me by saying that I should be a writer. That she hoped I would write more. But by then, my insecurities had already taken root. I could not imagine pursuing writing as profession. How could I, when I could not even place a comma correctly?
So I did not.
Around 2014, the first grammar and punctuation correction tools appeared. I paid for Grammarly and I started writing again, quite a lot actually. I tried to follow the dream of writing a book. But at that time, I did not yet know that I have aphantasia.
I did not understand why building a world felt so exhausting. Writing a book requires holding many elements in your mind at once. Characters, settings, timelines, arcs. I tried again and again to create a world, and every time I burned out. I could write short stories easily, but complex narratives felt impossible.
The reason was simple, though I did not know it then. I do not see images in my mind. I hear words. I understand concepts. But I do not visualize. Managing a complex imagined world without visuals was like trying to hold water in my hands.
It was only around the time of the pandemic that I realized I have aphantasia. And with that realization came another thought. Why did I ever think I could be a writer?
Then, yesterday, something shifted.
What started as an idea for a low-effort YouTube channel suddenly turned into a children’s story. And in that moment, I felt something click. This was manageable. I did not need a complex story arc. I did not need to plan everything in advance. I could do exactly what I did in school when writing felt natural. Take a page and fill it with a charming story. That was enough.
Then something unexpected happened.
When I created the first draft of the story, the characters had a picnic with berries, acorns, and bread. Simple. When I asked AI to create artwork for the picnic, the image that came back showed a full scene. There was a pie, berries, tea, and a cozy picnic laid out under a giant leaf. It was warm and magical and alive.
And suddenly my mind started asking questions.
Where did all this food come from? Why is one character only bringing acorns if there is already a full picnic? Who baked the pie?
That was when the world began to unlock in a new way.
Someone’s mom had to be a baker.
And just like that, there was a bunny who bakes magical treats and prepares cozy forest picnics for the children.
This is where the magic of AI revealed itself to me. It created something I could not visualize on my own, and once that context existed, I could build around it effortlessly. Give me an image, a nudge, and I can spin an entire world from it.
That realization was deeply comforting.
The Round Forest itself has existed in my mind for a very long time. One of the main reasons I never pursued it was money. Children’s books need illustrations, and illustrations are expensive. For a long time, that alone felt like a locked door. On top of that, I carried the quiet assumption that no one would want to publish my work anyway. That I would have to offer it to someone, wait, and eventually receive rejection.
So the forest stayed where it was. Imaginary and untouched.
But the world has changed.
We now have AI. I know It is not perfect tool or solution. It raises discomfort, and ethical debates, and all of that is valid. But in my case, it is also simple and practical. I do not have the money to pay for an illustrator. And if I wait for the moment when I suddenly can, this project will never exist.
For me, AI is not about replacing human creativity. It is about removing a financial barrier that has kept this world locked inside my head for years. It is the only way forward if I want to create The Round Forest at all.
And I want to create it.
Also, on-demand self-publishing is now a real, legitimate path. I no longer need anyone’s permission to create. I do not need to convince a gatekeeper that my story is worthy. I can simply make the thing and see what happens.
It does not even matter, at least not right now, whether anyone will like the story. That is not the point. The point is to create. To finally let something that has lived quietly in my head for years take form in the real world.
What feels especially magical is that I am not choosing between formats. I can create the stories, turn them into YouTube videos, and also shape them into a self-published children’s book. The same world, expressed in different ways. The same forest, with multiple paths.
At the same time, this changes how I need to work. My original plan was simple. One chapter, one video, then move on to the next. But now I see that it cannot work that way. I do not yet know where the story is going. I might later regret creating videos that no longer fit the larger world.
So instead, I will write ten chapters first. Then I will revisit the earlier ones and refine them. Maybe the forest is literally round. Or maybe it is called round because the paths wind endlessly in circles. Those details might only become clear later.
Nothing catastrophic will happen in the story. No one is going to die. But I will probably need to rewrite, adjust, and deepen things as the world reveals itself.
Strangely, that feels exciting.
The thought that I can hold a tangible book in my hands, with my own name on it, something that came entirely from my imagination, feels almost unreal. It feels like a dream that quietly waited until the right tools, the right understanding, and the right moment arrived.
I am standing in the middle of the forest. I am still a little confused.
But for the first time in my life, this feels like a creative writing project I can actually manage.
