In Polish, we have a saying, “even Salomon won’t pour from an empty cup,” which is equivalent to “you can't squeeze water from a stone.” Ideas for evocative, imaginative text don’t appear out of thin air either. When I come up with a concept for a character, I prepare a short introduction and start thinking about their origins. Creating a Word Bank maps the qualities and properties so that I don’t even need to write a full story to have a sense of who they are, what world they represent, and what tone the lore will take on.

In a world that favors instant gratification and perfectionism it is easy to feel behind, like everything exceeds me before I even manage to take a breath. Especially now, when everywhere I look—augmented bodies. Augmented faces. Augmented personalities. A world expanding so fast it forgot to ask if I wanted to come along.