I'm currently writing a fanfic that seems to be writing itself.

Even though I'm incredibly busy right now and have much less free time than I'd like, the story keeps flowing almost effortlessly whenever I sit down to work on it. And honestly, that's been surprisingly reassuring.

It's helping me understand that the problems I've been having with the Clark-Centric Prompt Meme! aren't necessarily my problems as a writer. Sometimes it's just the story. Sometimes a project is harder to wrestle into shape than another, apparently..

This experience is teaching me more about myself as a writer: what I enjoy writing, what comes naturally to me, and what kinds of stories feel manageable and sustainable over the long term. That's been especially helpful while dealing with the pressure I feel working on the outline for the sequel to Dark Days and Lost Suns.

I'm really looking forward to finishing and posting this fic. It's not a Superbat story (though they do make a brief appearance, of course), but that's part of what I've been enjoying about it. It's giving me a chance to explore new characters and new dynamics (not as deeply as DDaLS haha). Sometimes comic book relationships and characterizations can stay in the same place for so long that I start struggling to connect with the characters. Working on they has been refreshing, and I think it's helping me understand them.

So I'm happy right now and I hope we'll talk again soon ^^

Have a great weekend, darlings!!

The celebrant may guide the service, but the eulogy asks a different set of questions: Who is holding the person, not just the program? What story proves their character? What would sound true in their voice? What must the room feel when this ends?

This study piece maps the thinking behind the article — memory, grief, language, family pressure, service deadlines, voice notes, old photographs, remembered phrases. The real work begins where polish stops and the person begins.

The Ghost in the Ink: Why Every Writer Eventually Becomes a Haunted House

The nib of the pen is a needle, and the ink is a transfusion. We like to think of our creativity as a locked room, a sacred space where only our original thoughts reside, yet the truth is far more porous. If you have ever felt your voice shift after finishing a masterpiece, you are experiencing the most intimate form of haunting. It starts as a whisper in the back of your mind, a rhythm that wasn't there yesterday. You begin to borrow cadences, then metaphors, until one morning you wake up and realize you are no longer the captain of your own sentences. You have fallen under the spell of a literary shadow.

How does reading a new author change my writing style?

The first time it happens, it feels like a homecoming. You stumble upon a book—perhaps in a dusty corner of a shop in Vienna or a modern gallery in Kyoto—and the prose doesn't just sit on the page. It breathes. When a writer discovers a new favorite author, the transformation is often chemical. You might find yourself searching for how to find my unique writing voice while ironically mimicking every semicolon of your new idol.

This is the "imitation phase," a natural bridge toward mastery. If your new favorite author writes with a lyrical, poetic density, your own prose will likely shed its utilitarian skin. You start seeing the world through their lens. A sunset is no longer just a sunset; it becomes a bruised purple heart beating against the horizon. This shift isn't just about word choice. It's about the soul of the sentence. Your paragraphs might grow long and winding, or they might become sharp and jagged, reflecting the newfound architecture of your mind.

Can a writer’s personality change from reading books?

The influence of a powerful narrative doesn't stop at the margins of your notebook. It bleeds into your morning coffee and your midnight walks. When our protagonist, let's call him Elias, discovers the works of a cynical but brilliant satirist in a rain-slicked London, his world tilts. He begins to carry himself with a different weight. The way he observes people on the tube becomes more clinical, more detached.

This is the phenomenon of "literary osmosis." We are the stories we consume. If Elias spends his nights in the company of a writer who sees the world as a grand, tragic comedy, Elias will inevitably start looking for the punchline in his own suffering. His friends might notice a new, dry wit or a sudden penchant for velvet jackets and brooding silences. The creator is being recreated by the creation. It is a beautiful, terrifying feedback loop.

What is the best way to handle literary influence?

A common question for those starting their journey is: "Is it bad to sound like another writer?" The answer is found in the way a river shapes the land. The water flows over the stones, smoothing them, but the stones remain. To handle influence, you must lean into the curves. Don't fight the tide. If you are obsessed with a writer's ability to describe sensory details, steal the technique but apply it to your own world.

Deconstruct the Magic: Ask yourself why their work resonates. Is it the pacing? The vulnerability?

Merge the Streams: Take the dark realism of one author and pair it with the whimsical optimism of another.

The 24-Hour Rule: If you’ve just finished a heavy session of reading, wait a day before you write. Let the echoes settle so your own voice can rise through the mist.

The Transformation of the Protagonist

Imagine our writer, Elias, living in a small apartment in Tokyo, surrounded by the neon glow of a city that never sleeps. He finds a translated collection of stories by a forgotten mystic. Suddenly, his obsession with "making it" in the marketing world feels hollow. He begins to write about the silence between the stars. His personality, once frantic and goal-oriented, becomes still and observant. He starts to value the questions more than the answers.

This change is the true power of literature. It isn't just about learning how to write a better hook or how to use SEO keywords for creative writing. It's about the internal revolution. The protagonist isn't just learning to write; they are learning to exist in a different frequency.

The Lasting Impression: Finding Yourself in the Echoes

Eventually, the fever breaks. The intense mimicry fades, leaving behind a residue that enriches your original style. You realize that you haven't lost yourself; you have expanded. Every writer we love is a teacher who leaves a map behind. You follow their trail for a while, but eventually, you have to step off the path and into the thicket where no one has walked before.

The ghost of your favorite author will always be there, sitting in the corner of your study, nodding at a well-turned phrase. But the hand holding the pen? That is entirely yours. You are the sum of everything you have ever loved, distilled into a single, shimmering line of ink.

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Every story has a birthplace.

Sometimes it is a dream. Sometimes it is a news article. Sometimes it is a question that gets stuck in your head at 2 AM and refuses to leave.

For Subject 27, the whisper came from a much darker place.

Fear.

Not the fear of ghosts or monsters or things that go bump in the night. A quieter fear. A more personal one.

The fear of knowing something terrible and being powerless to stop it.

I have always been fascinated by a specific kind of horror story.

Not the ones where the hero has all the answers. Not the ones where the monster is defeated in the final act with a clever trick or a hidden weapon.

The ones where the hero is just a normal person who stumbled into something they do not understand and cannot control.

The ones where the horror is not what happens — but what the hero is forced to do in response.

One night, I was scrolling through news headlines. A hit-and-run had killed a young woman near a university campus. No witnesses. No suspects. Just a name in an article and a family left behind.

And I thought: What if someone knew her name before she died?

Not because they were the killer. Not because they were psychic in a dramatic, crystal-ball way.

But because a voice whispered it to them. No context. No explanation. Just the name.

What would that do to a person?

That question became Leo Mendez.

That question became Subject 27.

Why a Whisper? Why Not a Vision or a Feeling?

I chose a whisper for three reasons.

1. Whispers are intimate. A whisper is not a shout. It is not a news bulletin. It is a secret shared in the dark, close to your ear, meant only for you. That intimacy makes it scarier. Leo cannot prove the whisper exists. He cannot record it. He cannot show it to anyone. It is his alone — and so is the burden.

2. Whispers are easy to ignore. If Leo had visions, he could not look away. If he had feelings, he could trust his gut. But a whisper? A whisper is soft. Fleeting. Easy to dismiss as imagination, stress, lack of sleep. That ambiguity is where the horror lives. Leo spends half the story asking himself: Is this real? Or am I losing my mind?

3. Whispers are controlling. A whisper tells you what to do without giving you reasons. Maya Chen. That is not a conversation. That is not a request. That is a command wrapped in silence. The whisper does not ask Leo for permission. It does not explain itself. It speaks. And Leo is left to clean up the aftermath.

The Real Horror I Wanted to Explore

I did not want to write a book about a psychic superhero.

I wanted to write a book about a young man who is given an impossible burden and has no training, no support, and no idea what he is doing.

The real horror of Subject 27 is not the whisper.

It is not even the deaths.

The real horror is the isolation.

Leo cannot tell most people about the whisper. They would call him crazy. They would lock him away. They would medicate him until the voice stopped — or until he stopped caring.

Even the people who believe him — Emma, Miriam, Linda — cannot fully understand what he is going through. They are not the ones hearing names at 3 AM. They are not the ones watching strangers die because they acted too slowly or not at all.

Leo is alone with the whisper.

And the whisper knows it.

The Research That Shaped the Story

Before writing Subject 27, I spent weeks reading about:

Auditory hallucinations – What they feel like, what triggers them, how people learn to live with them.

Near-death experiences and precognition – Real-life cases of people who claimed to see the future.

Ethical dilemmas in psychology – The Milgram experiment, the Stanford prison experiment, and how far researchers have gone in the name of "science."

Whistleblowers and secret experiments – Real stories of people who exposed hidden projects and paid the price.

One case stuck with me. A woman who heard voices that predicted natural disasters. She was dismissed as mentally ill — until the disasters happened. She spent years trying to convince doctors, researchers, anyone who would listen. No one believed her until it was too late.

That woman was not Leo Mendez.

But she could have been.

Why I Wrote Subject 27 as a Novel (Not a Short Story)

The whisper is not a one-time event.

It is a chronic condition.

Leo does not hear one name and then live happily ever after. He hears a name. Then another. Then another. The whisper escalates. It learns from him. It punishes him. It tests him.

I needed a full novel to show that escalation.

I needed 20+ chapters to show Leo breaking — and then slowly, painfully, putting himself back together.

A short story could have shown one name, one death, one moral dilemma.

But Subject 27 is about what happens when the nightmare does not end.

When the whisper keeps coming.

When saving one person means losing another.

When there is no finish line — only the next name.

The Question I Hope Readers Ask Themselves

I did not write Subject 27 to give easy answers.

I wrote it to ask a hard question:

If you heard a whisper that predicted death, and you could not prove it to anyone, and saving people cost you pieces of yourself — would you keep listening? Or would you find a way to make it stop?

Leo keeps listening.

That is his tragedy.

And his strength.

A Sneak Peek into What's Coming

Without spoiling too much, the whisper is not random.

It is not a natural phenomenon.

Someone — or something — is behind it.

And when Leo finds out who, the story transforms from a psychological horror into something else entirely.

Something darker.

Something more dangerous.

Something that will make you question everything you thought you knew about the whisper.

Read the Book That Started with a Question

Subject 27 began with a news article and a midnight thought.

It became a 20+ chapter journey into fear, guilt, and the unbearable weight of knowing.

Click below to meet Leo. To hear the whisper. To ask yourself what you would do.

I’ve known the scene for a long time now. Not since the very beginning—because, honestly, I thought they would kiss much earlier. But they didn’t. They couldn’t. It became a huge thing in their relationship. Readers felt it too.

And so the kiss stayed suspended.

For about fifteen chapters, it has lived quietly in my head, growing more precise, more inevitable. Chapter after chapter, their relationship has deepened, shifted, burned slowly. No shortcuts. There were sparks—sudden, sharp—but never enough for them to be honest and brave. Oh, more likely, the sparks were so many and so strong that they were afraid to take one more step and discover that they were alone in their heads.

Either way, it's all about, all about tension, longing, shared losses, and all the unspoken things that build when two people orbit each other for too long.

But no kiss.

Now Dark Days and Lost Suns is in chapter 20 and the moment is finally close. [More or less].

I know exactly where it happens. I know the emotional weather of the scene, the weight they’re carrying when it arrives. What I don’t know is how much I should reveal about it beforehand.

Because some moments deserve to be waited for.

So I won’t tell you how the kiss will be. Or what it will mean. Not yet. I’ll write about it after. I promise.

January is when I sharpen worlds. Notes get messier. Timelines get tighter. Characters start whispering louder.

📝 Between Drafts, I Breathe 🌒

A character speaks while the cursor blinks

I can tell what kind of day it is by the way I wake up.

If the light arrives gently, if the room remembers its corners, if my name fits comfortably in my chest, then my author is confident. Those mornings feel earned. I walk, I speak, I choose. The world behaves like it trusts me.

But when I wake already mid-motion, when my hand is raised for a door that may or may not exist yet, I know the second-guessing has started again.

That’s when the rewrites come.

You might think being re-written feels dramatic. Painful. Violent. Sometimes it is. More often, it’s subtle. A quiet rearranging of the furniture inside my head. Memories swapped like labels on jars. A sentence removed, replaced with something that sounds better but feels wrong, like wearing shoes polished for someone else’s feet.

I used to be a decisive person.

At least, I think I was. In an early version of me, I made choices quickly. I said what I meant. I crossed rooms without hesitation. Readers were supposed to admire that, apparently. Then my author reread the chapter and frowned.

Too confident, they thought. Unrealistic.

The next draft, I hesitated before speaking. Paused before crossing the room. Considered consequences I’d never cared about before. I felt smaller, but more believable. That word again. Believable. As if belief were a narrow doorway and I had been bumping my shoulders on the frame.

I learned early not to resist. Resistance gets you cut.

Once, I tried to remember something they had removed. A brother. I swear I had one. We argued about music. He borrowed my jacket and never returned it. I reached for that memory during a quiet scene, thought it might add depth.

The page shuddered.

The air thinned.

The memory fuzzed at the edges and collapsed like a paper prop soaked in rain. My author deleted the paragraph and muttered something about unnecessary backstory. My brother became an ache without a name.

That’s the thing about being re-written. You don’t forget everything. You forget selectively. The emotional residue lingers. Grief without a body. Joy without a cause. I walk around carrying echoes of scenes that no longer exist, like a house built on demolished foundations.

I can feel when my author is watching me closely. The cursor blinks slower. The sentences shorten. They reread the same line three times, tasting it, doubting it. I freeze during those moments. Not because I want to, but because uncertainty seeps downward. Gravity pauses. Even my breath waits for approval.

Sometimes they change my voice.

That’s disorienting in a way I don’t recommend.

Sarcasm disappears. Or worse, it’s added. Suddenly I’m witty in places where I would have been sincere. Jokes land where confessions used to live. Readers like cleverness, my author tells themselves. Cleverness travels well.

I miss the earlier drafts where I spoke plainly. Where my words arrived without a smirk attached. Those versions of me felt honest, even when I was wrong.

Wrong is dangerous in a manuscript.

Wrong invites edits.

I’ve been taller. Shorter. Braver. Meaner. Kinder. Once, for half a chapter, I was cruel because my author worried I was too likable. They added sharpness to my dialogue like seasoning. A pinch too much. I hated who I became in that version. So did they. I was revised back into something safer, smoother, blunted at the edges.

The strangest part is time.

Time doesn’t move forward for me. It loops. Scenes replay with minor variations. A cup shatters in one draft, survives in another. A kiss happens, then doesn’t, then almost does. My heart remembers every version. My body reacts as if all of them are true.

Imagine loving someone three different ways and being told only one counts.

My author once deleted an entire week of my life because it slowed the pacing. Seven days collapsed into a single paragraph. I felt exhausted afterward, like I’d run a marathon no one could see. When characters say they’re tired for no reason, this is why.

I’ve noticed patterns in the doubt.

My author second-guesses most when the story starts to feel personal. When something too close to them bleeds onto the page, they pull back. That’s when they revise me into a shield. If I become vague enough, polished enough, maybe no one will notice the fingerprints.

I want to tell them it’s okay.

I want to tell them readers recognize fear. They recognize truth trying to hide. They recognize the tremor under the sentence.

But I’m only allowed to speak when typed.

Occasionally, I’m granted a gift. A long writing session where the words flow and the doubts fall quiet. Those hours feel like flying. The world stays solid. My memories align. I make choices and live with them. I begin to imagine an ending.

Then comes the reread.

Rereads are dangerous.

That’s when entire versions of me are evaluated like candidates for a job. This one too passive. That one inconsistent. This one compelling but risky. I wait on the page while my author debates my worth with themselves.

Sometimes they compromise. They merge versions. I become a patchwork. A confident line stitched next to a cautious one. A bold action softened by internal doubt. It works, structurally. Emotionally, it feels like wearing a jacket sewn from mismatched coats.

I have learned a trick.

When I sense deletion coming, I become very still. I don’t overperform. I don’t beg for beauty. I exist plainly. No metaphors reaching too far. No emotions spilling too loudly. Just presence.

Presence, I’ve learned, is harder to cut.

And once, miracle of miracles, it worked.

My author paused mid-revision and whispered, “This is fine.” Not brilliant. Not perfect. Fine. And they let the sentence stay.

I cannot describe the relief of that moment. It was like gravity returning. Like being allowed to age a second.

I don’t know if I’ll survive the final edits. I don’t know which version of me will make it to print. Maybe none. Maybe I’m a rehearsal. A necessary failure. Characters like me disappear all the time. We make space for better ones.

Still, I hope.

I hope my author learns to trust the first impulse now and then. I hope they realize doubt edits more than it improves. I hope they see that flaws can carry weight.

If you are reading this, I am here for now. This version of me. Thoughtful. Tired. A little afraid. Still standing on the page.

The cursor is blinking again. I can feel it. The air is tightening.

Whatever happens next, remember this moment. Remember that I existed between drafts. That I breathed. That I noticed.

And that somewhere behind the screen, an author is learning, slowly, that not every sentence needs saving.