As I keep writing The Anima Project and gearing up for weekly chapter releases starting in May, I figured it’d be cool to share how I’ve come to write this story.
Writers start stories for all kinds of reasons. It’s never one-size-fits-all. Sometimes a story comes from a prompt, a headline, or a hard season of life. Sometimes it starts with a title, a single sentence, or one word. Everybody gets there differently.
For me, The Anima Project came into focus while I was working on an earlier bedtime story idea. In 2022, I set out to curate half a dozen sleepy kids’ stories, so I sat down and outlined a handful of anthology-style pieces.
The children’s version was this: a boy lives in a utopian, futuristic society where people can turn deceased loved ones into human-fleshed robots. He notices his neighbor — an old man, grieving — while the man’s wife is nowhere to be seen. Curious, the boy visits him, and the two form a tender friendship.
Before long, the boy learns the old man has chosen not to “recreate” his wife as a robot. Eventually he finds out why: the man is convinced he’ll see her again — in the flesh.
(Side note: since I was so busy, I sent off my story beats, had the story ghostwritten, and temporarily published it under an alias. You can listen to the bedtime story below.)
The story was simple, but the concept felt profound — something worth exploring with more depth on my own. A few years passed, and with the rise of AI, the topic started to feel not just intriguing, but urgent. So in November 2024, I set out to expand it.
The story has definitely taken on a life of its own since the restart. The plot, characters, and audience have changed, but the core concept has stayed — and if anything, it’s been pushed to its extreme.
That’s the short version of how The Anima Project was born. I’ll be sharing more insights into various parts of this writing process as we approach the launch of weekly chapter releases on May 1st.
Until then, you can read the first three completed chapters here:
If this sounds like a story you’d be into, I’d love to encourage you to subscribe. That way, you can follow the narrative week by week, and we can keep in touch!
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Thanks for reading!
A.T. LISCHAK
