Dear Starving Actor,

You’ve picked a challenging career. And sometimes, I’m sure, it leaves you feeling emotionally hungry and alone.

As humans, we want to matter. And you may be in a position where you feel unimportant. You work in a restaurant, or a bar, or a hotel, or a gym assisting others.

While others get paid in their chosen professions, you work to be able to afford yours. And I’m sure there are days you wonder if it’s going to happen. You look out the window and long to be recognized for your artistic gifts. And you are pulled back to reality when someone asks you for a fork, or a toothbrush, or a towel.

Writing gives you the chance to feed the hunger. Nourishing yourself by playing with your own characters, worlds, and stories. It makes you a creator and provides you the opportunity to have an element of control in your career. It’s a powerful feeling to know that a moment before, there was nothing but a blank page, then you created something with the words you write.

Don’t just stop there. Get those words out there. Believe me, the world needs your words. We’re all lonely in our own unique way. Someone out there feels alone like you. And once they hear your story, they are reminded that others have had experiences similar to theirs. Your uniqueness reminds others they also matter.

By feeding others, you feed yourself.

There are words yet unwritten that can change the world. They just are waiting for you to put them on a page. You prove you matter the moment you do.

Jeremy Frazier graduated from Carnegie Mellon with a MFA in Drama Writing. He is the recipient of the Max K. Lerner Playwriting Fellowship and the Shubert Playwriting Fellowship. He was also a finalist for the John Cauble Award at the Kennedy Center for his one-act play, We’ll Always Have Paris. Jeremy was recently named as a quarter-finalist for the PAGE International Screenwriting Awards competition for his feature screenplay, Of Flesh and Blood. As the founder of the Actor’s Writing Gym, he loves working with actors to help them create their dream roles and believes that actors make the best writers.