Episode Details

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.

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