Imagination often escapes. The muse of a story, stirring up the imagination, is like a cat whose behavior is unpredictable. When my hands are on the keyboard, I may see no sign of it, yet when I'm lying down to sleep, it suddenly climbs onto my chest, disturbing my sleep. Moreover, imagination is volatile—it vanishes instantly if not recorded. This is why my notes app is always filled with short fragments of scribbling: dramatic scenes or dialogue, single-line endings, plausible titles, or 500-character synopses whose origins I can’t recall. Which of these will become a real story, I wouldn’t know.

So, I store these fragments on a notepad like a warehouse. Most remain dormant. Often, the emotions present when writing the notes have already vanished. Occasionally, however, some fragments stand out while I’m scanning the notes, as if calling to be awakened. New emotions—invisible when first recorded—arise. Using that emotion as energy, I begin to create a world where the sentences in my notes can come alive.

First, I take time and reread the sentence. If its direction is unclear, I follow its gaze, add background elements, and create a breathing space for the sentence. Words, backgrounds, and characters gradually attach, revealing the contours of the world. My role is less about building the world and more about finding and rearranging its hidden skeleton, like carefully assembling a puzzle of a preexisting scene that has never been aligned.

Next comes questioning: Why did this person make this choice? What principles govern this tilted world? Within these rules, what are possible, impossible, and at what cost? Questions lead to clues, clues to structures, and only then can emotions be layered atop. A character’s sorrow, anger, love, and fear collide with the world’s structure, breathing life into the story. Stories unfold at unpredictable speeds. Some plots emerge in days, others remain trapped for months or years in the first paragraph before suddenly blooming.

So, some stories just keep you waiting, asking for patience. Time in the story may be brief, but the time experienced by the character and author until realization can be endlessly long. Yet, this waiting melts into the temporal gap between the first and last paragraphs, shaping the story’s unique rhythm and pace. The rhythm of a story is ultimately not controlled by the writer’s hand, but by the unique sense of time created by its characters and world. At times I feel that a story is not something I write, but something I live through together with its characters.

Sometimes, I must pause. Would this character truly make this choice? Is it what the character truly desires, or am I imposing it? Such hesitation caused by these questions slows the story but preserves its unchanging principles. Decisions made according to principles—these are not grand. If Doctor Strange can open a portal to bring Spider-Man from Titan back to Earth, he could also throw Thanos into a black hole or solve nuclear waste issues. The principles are intended to ensure this much universality.

Such principles are not shackles that constrain imagination but provide fertile ground for deeper, truer stories. I believe fictional worlds demand even stricter adherence to rules. Treating fiction casually results in a world like a mansion with only outer walls—no doors or hallways—where no one can live. Imagined worlds can hold a stricter truth, so it must be handled delicately. This is why the “cat” of imagination is to be held carefully and caressed gently because it may not come back if it gets upset.

Imagination can also be frightening sometimes. Gazing at the cold, distant universe long enough, one realizes that stars and planets would remain indifferent if one disappeared. Yet strangely enough, this realization carries a paradoxical warmth. Watching the universe, aware of how human beings are like a dust in the universe, evokes an oddly overwhelming, profound sense of elation. So to me, sometimes, writing feels like a prayer wherein I keep repeating the same question: “Is it okay for us to exist here?” The universe never answers, but the act of asking strengthens the world within the story.

After traversing all time and space, the story finally reaches its conclusion. Finishing a story doesn’t merely mean saying goodbye to characters; it signals that I can finally release them. They now leave me and exist as independent beings, ready to reach readers. And I wait again, hoping the next “cat” brings new imagination.