How to Be a Writer with Kyle Stevenson
Today my guest is my super cool, ultra fit, deeply compassionate and hilarious friend and creative genius Kyle Stevenson. I met Kyle during my year one playwriting class in which he played the leading man, The Vegan Life Coach in the staged reading of my debut play, She Is Not Catholic, She Is Vegetarian. And he nailed it.
For years, Kyle and I ate lentils and kale and piles of impossibly healthy food at The People’s Potato. Over multiple free lunches we discussed all our favourite topics, namely sex, anxiety, creativity, yoga cults, butt exercises, therapy, and how to make it as a writer. When we grew up, we would often convene in various playgrounds in Toronto to get caught up on the latest in Gay Husbands, deadlifting regimes, and what we’re supposed to be doing with our lives.
Kyle is famous for founding the wildly successful online pandemic workout class, Cyber-Fit, also known as Push-up Class. He has been a devoted scriptwriter for decades and for years, he has been my dream guest. This episode is my longest one yet but totally worth it! You’ll be a different person at the end than you were at the beginning. That’s what happened to me and Kyle!
Also, there’s a blog version of the listener question from Working to Live While My Boyfriend Works to the Point of Self-Destruction. Kyle says that blogs are making a comeback, so please check it out. You can read it here! Infinite thanks!
Chapters
(Full shownotes at www.ericajschmidt.com/podcast/how-to-be-a-writer-with-kyle-stevenson)
(00:00:00) Intro + theme song + Kyle’s bio
(00:02:36) How Kyle and Erica were anointed with the idea that we would transform our exquisite gifts and innate potential into a spectacular TED talk and the world would be totally delighted about it.
(00:04:50) “Absolutely from a young age I was like, why would you not achieve your wild dreams and be recognized and lauded by the world by just doing super great things that everyone agrees is very very impressive. Nothing else made sense to me.”
(Kyle thinks it is more embarrassing to have self-identified as this person of promise as opposed to Erica whose life great mythology was forever altered when she skipped grade two.)
(00:07:48) Erica’s thoughts on Special Person Syndrome: “I always just thought that I was supposed to get the main part… like in the grade one Halloween concert, I was incensed if I didn’t get to be the head pumpkin.
(00:08:55) Kyle’s first literary influence: Bruce Coville’s My Teacher Is An Alien (grade four)
“So then you read a lot. And then, just whatever you’re doing, you’re kind of like, well, what if I did that.”
(00:10:00) How it was easier to be a star when we lived in villages of 75 humans.
Kyle on finding your way to excel in a small group: “By middle school, my goal for an English essay was not an A, but I considered it a failure if our teacher didn’t use my essay as an example for the other class.”
Erica: “Pressure!”
(00:13:17) Why is it so hard to enjoy the things you are good at for their own sake?
(00:14:51) Did Kyle start writing seriously in grade seven?
Kyle: “I would dispute the term serious… The desire to write came pretty early. Like I started a lot of journals in elementary school… But I don’t know if that was about, oh I love to put the words down, at the time I think it was more, like my life is so big and my emotions are so powerful. And it’s more a way to document than to write a great lit novel. Like I’ve got to keep track of the incredible, the ins and outs of my life. Like this record will be useful one day. Which is so embarrassing! But I know I’m not alone, I know we’re just out there being narcissists…”
(00:18:43) On being a loveable person with a big fan club. What is the role of people pleasing and conflict aversion in all this? Where is the model for an ability to make friends as integral to an important life?
(00:25:00) Kyle’s early visions of creative success and what it means to have an important life
“I imagined success to be an end to the wondering of like, do I matter, am I important. Maybe more than anything else, you’re like, I hope everyone agrees that I’m important and then I’ll have to stop wondering myself. And when that clicks into whatever you do, that’s when things get way less fun.”
“At the end of your life, I can’t imagine you’ll wish, I wish I’d spent more time wondering if I mattered… I could have been doing something way more memorable… that mattered or not. I could have had one more ice cream cone, or went down the slide one more time. But of course the human mind, it cares not for what will matter later. It’s very pressed for what matters right now.”
(00:26:52) Kyle’s educational path from linguistics and Old English to Creative Writing at Concordia University. He decides that writing is his dream and proceeds to move into a house with ten people, party hard, and work on his short stories.
“I’ve never been good at starting simple.” The case for sticking with sticking with a beginning, middle, and end, and calling it a day.
(00:30:28) Creative Writing at Concordia University Making school and writing the focus of your life
“You keep telling yourself you’re gonna do this thing. And now, it’s going to be your job.”
(00:36:59) Writing routine after university
(00:40:24) When was it too late to make it as a blogger plus Kyle’s writing advice from 2011.
(00:44:54) “I have to earn my place on this earth and the only way to do that is writing.” On feeling behind on your life at age 27.
(00:47:07) Every writing project is going to have to face and stand up to a bunch of different yous.
(00:49:48) How to accept that the first draft is a throwaway, vomit draft. Erica and Kyle find this physically painful.
(00:53:04) The austere writing routine in the water closet, the importance of taking writing brick by brick and letting go of heroic effort.
Erica: “Why do we think writers are heros? Like the people taking kids to the park on leashes every day, those are the heroes. I mean whatever, be a writer. But it’s so dramatic.”
(00:57:30) Getting out of a writer’s slump, working out like crazy, and questioning whether becoming a tv writer was the gold star he always dreamed of.
(01:01:34) Kyle writes an essay and suddenly sees himself in the main character of Whiplash.
(01:06:04) Kyle is applying to become a therapist. What does it even mean to be a successful writer.
(01:14:48) Dude at Concordia who said: “Some people want to be writers and some people want to want to be writers.”
Erica figured out who it was—Andrew Battershill. He’s three books in. He fucking did it!
(01:16:29) Role of exercise in Kyle’s writing routine and the rest of his life. (Long live Cyber-fit!)
“I don’t think I can understate how important it is… it allowed me to find a consistency that I’d never found before.”
(01:23:53) Epic Listener Question from Working to Live While My Boyfriend Works to the Point of Self-Destruction. Listen to this whole thing! What wise advice!
Our Credentials:
Erica – 10 going on 11 months of romance this decade. Instagram PhD in relationships thanks to Jillian Tureki
Kyle – 17 years and counting with the stunning and delightful Brittney. En route to therapy school.
(01:56:39) Kyle’s spectacular TED talk. Something about accepting failure
(01:58:21) Half-bad ukulele segment. Living on a prayer. Incredibly special.
(02:02:24) THE END, finally. Follow Kyle on YouTube at Public Access TV Writing.
