I used to be very fond of Austin Kleon and of his work. I talked about him whenever I could. I bought all of his books (except for Newspaper Blackout) and lined them up on my office windowsill. I printed a picture of him and put one above my desk at work and another above my writing desk at home. His image inspired me. He was who I wanted to be.

But at the beginning of the pandemic, I found myself moving away from his work. It no longer caught my attention, which somewhat scared me; the one whom I looked up to was now becoming irrelevant to me.

I held on to Kleon’s work during my first three years in Boston. His writing gave me a sense of permission, as though I too could write about whatever came to mind each week. It was in reading his blog that I discovered my desire and joy in writing about the mundane.

And for my blog, I copied the black and white aesthetic that he has. I copied what I knew, and Kleon was all I knew at the time.

But time changes things, and people change too.

Recently while browsing Instagram, I came across one of Austin’s most recent posts which read: I don’t check DMs, send an email I can ignore.

He describes that it was supposed to be a joke and a means of clearly communicating how he could be contacted. But it turned me off. Are not artists supposed to be accessible? Are not writers supposed to want to connect with their audience?

Experiencing such receptivity from artists such as Koojse Koone, Shantell Martin, and even author Sherman Alexie a few weeks ago left an impression on me. I simply commented on their Instagram work or tagged them in my Story, and yet they replied.

They kept communication flowing.

And that is what I want to do. But I have a list of friends who reached out to me once and whom I never got back to: A friend who wrote a beautiful paragraph of why she enjoyed reading my blog. Another friend asking me to draw something for her sister’s birthday. And all of these I read but never gave them the time they deserved.

Busyness and stress will always be there. And how is it that I respond to them like this when I am not even known in the writing world? If I react like this with the little that I have, I do not want to know what will become of it if more people begin reading my work.

Now, I want to be like Koojse Koone, like Shantell Martin, like Sherman Alexie. I want to write and create in order to connect, and I want to keep the door open for anyone who wants to walk in and have a conversation.

This brings me to these set of questions: Why do you write, Cecilia? Is it only for fame? Is it to connect? Why do you write?

I write in order to connect, in order to share, in order to tell stories. I write because I think it is something worth reading, because I need to. I write because, deep down, I want to be listened to.

Thomas thought back to all those stories he had told. He had whispered his stories into the ears of drunks passed out behind the Trading Post. He had written his stories down on paper and mailed them to congressmen and game show hosts. He had climbed up trees and told his stories to bird eggs. He had always shared his stories with a passive audience and complained that nobody actively listened.

Sherman Alexie, Reservation Blues (212).