What if your most winding career path was actually preparing you for your true calling?
Vicky Fang didn’t follow a straight line to children’s book authorship.
She was a theater performer, designer, and tech professional. And finally came motherhood, the role that made all the others make sense: storyteller for the next generation.
In this conversation, Vicki shares how every creative detour shaped her voice, why children’s books need both heart and strategy to succeed, and what happens when you’re brave enough to start over in an industry that doesn’t make it easy.
Highlights
Every creative experience becomes material
Vicky calls herself a “serial creative,” and she means it as a strength, not a scattered identity.
Theater taught her character development. Design gave her visual thinking. Technology showed her interactive possibilities. Motherhood gave her purpose.
“I’m a bit of a serial creative. So I ended up here after I had kids of my own and decided I wanted to start writing books. After a long career of doing all kinds of different creative jobs.”
The creative life isn’t about finding one thing and sticking to it forever. Sometimes it’s about collecting skills until you find the project that needs all of them.
Stories always win with kids
Working at Google on products for children taught Vicky something crucial: no matter how sophisticated the technology, kids respond to character and narrative above everything else.
“In our research we saw how much character and story really engaged kids. So we were trying to help kids learn coding or become familiar with technology. but it always came back to story and character.”
This insight became the foundation of her transition. Technology could teach, but stories could transform. And transformation is what children’s books are really about.
From interaction design to children’s books
Vicky’s path from Google to picture books wasn’t as random as it might seem. Her background in interaction design actually prepared her perfectly for children’s literature. This is how she described her path:
“‘Well, we actually have an interaction design role in our consultancy, and we need to design a game. And since you have game design background, why don’t you come in?’ So I ended up getting into interaction design that way.”
Both fields require understanding user experience, engagement patterns, and how to hold attention. The medium changed, but the core skills transferred beautifully.
Parenthood changes everything
Having children didn’t just give Vicky new subject matter. It gave her new purpose and a completely different relationship with storytelling.
“And I was having kids of my own. I was reading books to them. And so I just thought, I want to make one of these.”
Sometimes the most profound career pivots happen not in boardrooms or networking events, but in quiet moments reading bedtime stories and realizing you want to be the person creating the magic, not just consuming it.
Every experience feeds the work
What makes Vicky’s approach unique is how she weaves her entire professional history into her storytelling. Theater gave her character development. Design taught her visual thinking. Technology showed her interactive possibilities.
“This is what’s amazing about writing is that it kind of pulls from all of your experiences in life. So I feel like every piece of my life has played some role in the books that I create now.”
The creative career isn’t about finding your one thin. It’s about discovering how all your things work together to create something only you could make.
Closing Reflection
Vicky’s story proves that creative careers don’t have to follow traditional timelines or predictable paths.
If you’re a creative entrepreneur wondering whether it’s too late to pivot, too risky to start over, or too complicated to combine all your interests into something meaningful, Vicky’s story is your permission slip to try.
Ready to share your creative journey? Drop a comment and tell us about the winding path that led you to your current work.
Thank you Tomesha Campbell, Norma Cardenas, and many others for tuning into my live video with Vicky Fang! Join me for my next live video in the app.
