The best thing about being a writer, in my opinion, is that you get to play god.

You decide what happens to your character, who dies, who lives, who’s happy, and who’s sad. You decide what your character says, does, wears, eats, drinks, and so on.

Things you may not be able to do in your own life, you can do in your book, through your character.

For example, in real life, I can’t have a dog. I do take care of some of our relatives’/friends’ dogs now and then, but due to my work, I can’t have my own dog. Not yet. And it’s sad, because I’d love to have one.

So I dreamed up a dog and put it into my novel.

I love it. I love the imaginary dog. Through my character(s), I play with it, feed it, and walk it around. It was hard when I had to end my story, because every book has to have an ending. But who knows? I might one day be able to have an actual dog, just like the imaginary one I made.

If you’ve always dreamed of having something nice that you can’t quite have yet, it helps to write it down sometimes. You can be creative about it, visualize it to be as realistic or far-fetched as possible. It’s a fun and harmless way of playing god. At least for me, it also somewhat relieves the itch and craving.

Then, one day, when you finally get to have that nice thing, whatever it is, imagine how fun it would be to read what you’ve written those many years ago.