Letter from the Voices Editor

Dear Stranger,

I remember a few years back, the summer I turned 10, I sat in the grass of my home backyard, mixing cotton balls and paint, making galaxy jars. 

These jars, a simple mixture of silver glitter, cotton balls, purple paint, and water inside of a mason jar were my heroin that summer. I had about five of them above my bed.

I’ve always liked doing things with my hands; I have always looked for things to create. I’ve been writing stories since I was small, drawing comics during class, and even running my own fashion company with my sister in my childhood room. It was a full-time job. I also remember writing a Christmas screenplay after getting dropped off at home from the bus in the fourth grade.

I get attached to things quite easily, yet here we are, 10 years later, no galaxy jar in sight.

I also tend to let things go, writing new stories after half-finishing others, putting down a book because I found a new one at the library, and ending a movie before the final scene just because I can. Sometimes, I am fast at starting anew.

I’ve also been at The Wake since my freshman year of college. I graduate this spring.

It’s not that I don’t stick with things, that isn’t true. It’s just that, to stick with something, I really, really, really, have to care.

I also tend to stress about most things, whether the future is strange and unwelcoming, or whether I’ll find myself in Minnesota when I'm 60. Yet the one thing I have never had to worry about is whether my love to create will ever go away. That sticks with me.

So while I haven’t felt the urge to make a galaxy jar in years, I feel the urge to create every day. To read and draw, to write the same sentence over and over until it feels just right. To try really, really hard because it’s not about who reads what I write, but what I write itself.

And here, within The Wake, I’ve been lucky enough to find people who help me write the best I can—and are willing to write the same sentence over and over too. 

Sincerely,

Bianca Llerena

Voices Editor