Finding a way to tell my stories
On figuring out my asexual voice and the stories I'm ready to tell.
This past week I was at a scriptwriting retreat, and I went with a pitch for an asexual-themed play. This is a blog about all those things (and written on a train, sleep-deprived and introvert-social-battery-drained).
It’s a whole mish-mash of complex things, my relationship to writing, my relationship to theatre as well as my relationship to asexuality and writing about it.
Firstly, I haven’t written a script in what feels like a very long time. My relationship to theatre has been very broken. It’s a relationship that was broken pre-2020, but one that truly fell apart then. While others clamoured to be back, I went through what I can only describe as a break-up with theatre. We’ve maybe reconciled a bit, we’re maybe exes who are friends now, maybe even friends with benefits. But we’re not back together. (Yes I do realise the irony of this metaphor in a blog about writing asexual stories). My inability to even come up with a play idea cemented the thought that I was indeed properly broken up with theatre.
But when I was offered this opportunity, to spend a week learning script writing skills but also immerse myself in trying to write a play again it felt like a chance to give it another go. To not quite let go. And it was exciting to feel part of that world again. And after two years of a lot of teaching writing myself, the chance to flip that and learn skills, practice them too, was a fantastic experience. And besides for scripts or other projects, the basis of those skills, exercises and other tips are invaluable.
When it came to writing the script however I just had…nothing at all. While I’d known I wanted to write about asexuality, I’d even sketched out rough concepts and ideas, but I had no solid idea. Before the retreat I didn’t force it, figuring that’s what the retreat was for, after all, I’d figure it out. Except I didn’t. I just had nothing. A total blank space (and not the good Taylor Swift kind…)
I’ve never (outside of academic essays) experienced true ‘writer’s block’ like it. I’ve had stumbling blocks in projects sure, but never a total…nothingness. Initially, I blamed theatre, I just couldn’t write for the stage and this was my sign that we were finally done. But slowly, eventually, I realised it wasn’t the form, it was the story. A story I wasn’t ready to tell, and one I needed another story to help me tell first.
Because I discovered my asexuality through stories I wrote and read (I accidentally wrote a demisexual character before I knew the word, then I read a book about asexual librarians that changed my life and gave me the words for it I didn’t have) I wanted to write back to that. In my head, blank space aside, the story I was trying to tell was a contemporary mash-up of experiences I and other asexual people I know have had. It seemed the logical thing to do, to try and reflect on the experience myself and what felt like this small secret group of people have had, back at the world. It was supposed to be the ‘we’re here, we’re also queer, we have stories too’ moment. But I could come up with nothing.
Again, I blamed the form. I had vague ideas but nothing that I could make ‘a play’ they were all novels…or nothing at all. And that hurt. Theatre has been such a force for me as a writer, but also for me as a queer person and I long to see myself, my real self, represented there. As much as I feel my generic ‘queer’ voice is welcomed, and part of a bigger conversation, I wanted theatre to be part of the asexual conversation. I also long to feel like I ‘fit’ in theatre, that the quiet, somewhat earnest (occasionally funny) stories I like to tell have a place. Much like my asexuality in theory I’m part of the bigger picture, but in reality…am I? Do my stories really belong?
On Wednesday afternoon I doubted all of it. The stories, my story, anyone wanting to hear about this subset of queerness that feels invisible (we are after all defined by an absence of something). But mostly, as I have for a long time, doubted my place to write theatre stories once again. Because I could see nothing at all when I tried to imagine this story.
And suddenly everything about my relationship with theatre became put on that play, that non-play. As much as I’ve cried a variety of tears over my relationship with the theatre, tears of many kinds from angry to sad- this Wednesday is when that really hit me. I really felt like this meant it was over. This time the on again off again relationship was off. We had broken up for good. So when I cried in frustration and sadness over this play for a good chunk of Wednesday afternoon, it was for both the story that I couldn’t tell, and so desperately needed to, but also for theatre and the end of something at last.
Dramatic? Yes, when written down it sounds it. But firstly, well theatre dahlinngs. Secondly when you’ve put so much of yourself, but also so much of your life into this stuff…it matters. Maybe not to everyone else but it matters to me (that might be a Waitress lyric but the point stands). And the total absence of a story, much like sexuality as an absence, felt like…an ending.
Here’s where maybe my metaphor begins to work. Maybe it wasn’t a breakup. Just like discovering my asexuality wasn’t an ending, but not quite a beginning. It was understanding my place, my identity, and finally being ok with that.
My theatre writing journey has always been one of not fitting in. Of not writing what the cool kids write. Of not being what the cool theatres want. It’s always been not being edgy enough, not ‘big ideas enough’, not ‘pushing the envelope enough’ (insert buzzwords as you wish). Similar to my sexuality, I was never ‘queer enough’. I was too earnest, too in need of human stories but not quite like everyone else, or at least whatever was trendy. It actually feels a lot like my relationship to my sexuality, knowing I was queer in the broadest sense, but never fitting in there fully. Until I found the language for it. And then turns out though, being asexual is pretty damn queer and I deserve a place at that table. I think too, that the journey with this story taught me I’ve got as much right to try and tell my stories my way, and much like my sexuality they might not be what most people are doing, but they’re valid too.
The way I got into the story I’m now going to tell is through writing a novel. A novel I’ve been writing because I broke up with theatre because I couldn’t do it anymore. While I was having my Sad Penguin* meltdown over telling the theatre story, a friend was finishing reading that one. He said to me ‘I know you’re done with theatre, but that final scene reads pretty theatrical to me.’ And so, to help me out, he suggested I use what I had, just to have something to share, just to get me through this week. So I adapted scenes I’d written in the novel I’d written to escape theatre and the novel I’d also channelled my baby steps of writing asexual characters in (or Acey as the same friend described it, which I think is my new label and character description). In doing that (Which granted could be a play, if you like messy gay chaos, ridiculous Thanksgiving dinners and Ice Hockey). But from that story, I found a play.
I’d always known there was another story in that story, the story of the parents of my novel’s main character. Who also, yes was a little bit Ace-y and had her own story. I suddenly found a story I could tell. Partly because I knew her already, I knew her story and why it needed to be told. But I could tell it because while it was an asexual story, it was one worlds away from me.
In trying to write the play I realised something important; I wasn’t ready to tell that story, the story I thought I was writing. I didn’t have the words. And it made me realise that I don’t always, don’t yet have the words for my asexuality either. I don’t have the sub-labels down, I don’t know what my life looks like with it either. That’s overwhelming, scary even sad sometimes too. But because I found my labels through stories, maybe I start to find more of myself in writing stories too. So while I couldn’t write the story I thought I was writing, what I could do was use some of the knowledge and experience to tell one asexual story. But not the story that felt closer to me. That made sense in its way too, because stories had helped me find my asexual identity so it makes sense that creating another would help me along that road. So actually the story I found, the story of a character I already knew, but whose story had more to say, found a way into that. The more contemporary story, the more ‘me’ story is still there to be told. But not quite yet. I need more stories from other people first to give me the words for that. Even if they’re stories I need to write.
I think it's ok as well to not to be ready. To not know the labels, the details or the stories I can’t wait to find a way to tell that story someday in all its messy feelings. But I need someone else’s voice, someone a bit more removed from myself to tell that story too. That doesn't make it any less authentic, any less cathartic either. Actually, the character in that story, the one I know I’ll now write, feels like another step along that road. If I can tell her story I can figure out my own. If I can figure out my own I can figure out the next stories that might help people.
I think it’s also important to acknowledge that even trying to write this story takes courage. This week I had to ‘come out’ yet again in describing my story, this time in a room full of people, mostly strangers and some people I’d known for years. And let’s not pretend that’s ever easy because it’s not. However theoretically accepting the room, you’re giving a part of you, exposing it, inviting judgment. When you attach that to the creative work you do too, it's doubly exposing, vulnerable and downright scary. It helped that the group was a queer group. It wasn’t a queer retreat but it was a queer retreat and those spaces are important.
I’m scared to share that story too. There’s a part of me that feels my asexual self isn’t ‘enough’ just like my theatre-writing self isn’t ‘enough’. That these are both things I should keep to myself.
It’s a story that’s challenging for me to tell. It doesn’t rest on the ‘safe’ stories-even the safe queer stories- we have now come to know. It’s something people find more difficult to wrap their heads around. But it also requires giving a part of me to the story too which I’m ready for but also scared to see where it leads me.
Because I also I know there’s power in these stories. For the people who need them, for the people who don’t even know they need them yet. I know that because I was those people, and I am still that person who needs these stories to make sense of my world.
Who knows if this story will see the light of day. Who knows if I am done with theatre? But much like the novel I wrote to escape theatre writing, hopefully, the act of writing it will prove useful in itself. I long to share these stories one day, I think they’re important stories to share. But for now, writing them is enough.
*Sad Penguin days are those days when you’re just sad like a little penguin for no reason, or maybe lots of reasons. My Sad Penguin looks like this. And as my wise friend above said too ‘maybe today is just a Sad Penguin day’ and that’s ok too when it comes to writing and life.