Why I Write

Why I Write was the first assignment given to us in our gateway course, and coincidentally the last writing assignemnt I finished. This paper is meant to inform the rest of my projects (repurpose and remediation) and give an insight into who I am. I consider myself a very personal writer and thinker, yet answering such a simple question "Why do you write?" was much more difficult than I expected it to be. I approached this assignment by asking and answering other questions that would inform the answer to Why I Write.

“Ok I am in a business class where I have to do something out of my comfort zone,” said Emily, “What do I do?” Emily is one of my “muggle friends,” as I like to joke. More commonly referred to as a non-theatre friend.

“Why don’t you audition for something? Like a student run play or film. That would be perfect!” I reply.

“Yes!” Emily says, “Oh my God yes this is so perfect. Can you forward me audition emails?”

“Wait that’s awesome…”Alexa says, “Emily what if you get it!” Emily’s face lights up with excitement.

“Oh my god what if I get it!” She says.

“Well…I mean do you want to get in? Like if you got in would you do it?” I say.

“Oh yes that would just be icing on the cake. More to write about for my final project.”

“Taylor would just audition and get it that’s the thing, “ Alexa says. Everyone laughs.

“I mean I don’t know about that,” I say, “Theatre majors audition for those all the time like I don’t just get in everything I audition for.”

“I don’t know,” our other friend Natalie interjects. “What if they get a crush on her? Taylor’s so pretty it could happen.”

Later on I bring this conversation up with another friend. “It’s just so typical,” I say, “Like I brought it up as something she should try to be out of her comfort zone not something she should try to make a career in.”

“Maybe she will get it,” Robert says, “She’s pretty.”

“Oh my god,” I sigh. “I don’t know. I told her to audition for the advanced ones because I don’t think she would even want to do it so there’s less of a chance.”

“That doesn’t seem very fair,” Robert replies.

“It’s plenty fair! What are you talking about? Like the real world isn’t fair. Everyone and anyone just thinks they can be an actor with no training and no passion. They have just heard a couple people tell them they’re beautiful and so they try to act. That’s not fair,” I say.

“Well there’s plenty of celebrities that has happened to…I mean think of all the people scouted in ma-“

“I don’t care!” I cut Robert off. “They’re not talented!”

“You have chosen a very interesting career,” Jerry says, eyeing my class of sixteen wide-eyed young actors sitting before him. “A couple of people get together and say ‘Let’s put on a dance,’ So they get the tights and the shoes, but once they get on stage, they realize they cannot dance,” He smiles at us. We wait in anticipation. “Some more people decide they want to put on a concert, so they get the instruments and the equipment, but realize they cannot play music,” He continues. “If people decide to put on a play, they learn the lines, get on stage, and they do it.” There is a silence in the room as we contemplate this concept. “Anyone can ‘act’,” He looks at us, “Anyone. So why do you do it? Why do you think you can do it?”

I struggle with the concept that I have no distinguishable talent.

I was never in plays, but I lived my life on a perpetual stage. Considering the signs, it seems that I should have realized much earlier what I was looking for was in theatre. I narrated my life in my head as if I were the heroine in a To Kill a Mockingbird type novel. My friends would make me quote SNL and speak in accents for them. My extended family referred to me as the Belanger “celebrity.” I played for much longer than my friends and enjoyed children shows well past their designated age range, and if I am being completely honest I probably still do. I was always begging my friends to play “skits” at sleepovers, a revolutionary game I made up where I forced everyone to put on skits. Revolutionary.

Growing up I did not know acting was a profession for real people and certainly not for me, but I had the kind of creativity and high emotional intelligence that is often found in artists, so I channeled that to what I was familiar with: writing. For one thing, it was just about the only thing in school I did not completely dread and I loved the feeling of creating something that people actually liked reading. I spent much of my childhood scribbling little stories in old notebooks around the house and by the time I was twelve I was aiming to write a Pulitzer Prize winner to get me into college. However every time I sat down to write this award-winning novel I realized I have no actual plot and no substantial characters, only one brilliant closing sentence or a beautifully descriptive paragraph about the gleam of Charlotte’s hair.

When I made my way onto my first stage in my high school’s production of My Fair Lady, the reason I could never commit to writing made a lot of sense to me. More than just the exhilaration of the live audience and the deep satisfaction I felt when I was on stage, I was able to use my emotional intelligence and creativity and apply that to characters that were already created for me. I figured the reason I used to want to be a writer was because it was the closest thing I had in my life to acting.

After auditioning and being accepted into a BFA program, I began to realize the world that I lived in greatly differed from my peers. When people would ask me what I wanted to do I tell them, “I want to act.”

“But how?” They ask with fascination. And I know what they’re thinking: “Why do you have to go to school to learn how to…act?”

“Well,” I reply, “I will most likely move to LA or New York and try to work enough until I have money to be able to pay an agent and then from there I will just have to audition. A lot.”

“That is so cool,” They say as they stare at me with fascination and pity.

“Yes,” I reply, “So cool.”

In the second semester my sophomore year of college I had hit a wall. I had just come off of a string of performances where I spent considerably more time offstage than onstage and I was feeling tired, overworked, and unfulfilled. I wasn’t getting cast or at least if I was I wasn’t getting the parts I wanted. I wanted to feel the way I felt when I came into the BFA program; to feel that acting was my passion and was one of the things that made me feel my best no matter what. However I was beginning to resent rehearsals and felt that my time was often being wasted. I was uneasy and almost ashamed that I felt this way because acting was my chosen directive. I loved to act and had chosen to major in it, but never before had I felt that acting was a job. All of this prompted me to take some time off from auditioning to gather my thoughts and figure out exactly what it is I needed.

It was then that I took English 325 discovered the creative non-fiction essay.

Demonstrated by authors such as Ann Lamott, Joan Didion, and Annie Dillard, the creative nonfiction essay is very indicative of its name, using real experiences to raise an argument or a question in an original way. I was instantly drawn to this style of writing because unlike fictional characters I had tried to create but was never able to fully develop, the creative nonfiction essay allowed me to further develop myself as a character. In many ways this was very therapeutic. I had mainly only ever written academic type essays before about topics I many times could hardly relate to, but in English 325 I was able to write about my own life in accordance to ideas I cared about and wanted to discuss. I had rediscovered what I had given up when I began acting. There was still very much a part of me that needed to write. I used to think that writing was the accessible creative outlet I found before I had discovered acting, but through acting I gained a different perspective on why I had ever chosen to write in the first place. Anyone can act and anyone can write, how well, who knows? But anyone can do it. However with writing I have control to do it in a way only I could. Control to direct, act, design, write, and produce the entire “production.” Control to know exactly what I want my audience to feel, and lead them there in my own way. Control to do whatever I want no matter my height, hair color, past experience, or beauty.

I cannot tell anyone I am a good actor. I can stun you with an impressive resume or tales of my lead in The Crucible, but I cannot tell you I am a good actor. You have to see. And even then you can decide for yourself if you liked my performance or not. Everyone in the audience could have loved it and you could have hated it and I still could have gotten an academy award but I cannot tell you I am a good actor. But I can show you what that is like. I can make you feel the little fire the burns in the core of my passion. I can give you the heartbreak and the hilarity and the irony of the theatre in ways that make you think, that you relate to. I can ask you to care. I write because I can.