[Watch the video interview on YouTube here]
Film Courage: Something you said on your Secret Writer Podcast when your co-host Nick Jobe was interviewing you is ‘Everyone teaches you HOW to do something, how to act, etcetera, but no one teaches you how to live as the person who does that?’ I’m wondering if you can expand on that?
Steve Harper, Screenwriter/Writing Coach/Podcaster/Youtuber: Yeah, this is one of the big, underlying ideas in I think in my life and certainly why I coach and help people and make YouTube videos and all that stuff is that I spent a long time and am continuing to create stuff and learn how to create stuff. I studied theater and undergrad and I went to acting school and I went to playwriting school and I also studied to be a coach.
I feel like it’s people can say do this like:
-Create a log line…
-Here’s how to do a character…
-Here’s how many scenes a play has or could have (or a TV script or a movie)...
Those things are not easy but fundamental and on some level even though lots of people have different theories are universal, we can sort of agree at the length of it our drama the length of a film or a play and we can say it sort of looks like this but to live the life of a person who’s doing that, who’s creating those things or auditioning or trying to be a musician or trying to be a singer, all of that stuff, that day-to-day:
-How do you get up in the morning?
-Inspire yourself to go back to rehearsal?
-Go back to the page to work on another draft?
-To take another meeting?
It’s exhausting and nobody talks about how do we gather the energy of mentorship and friendship and spirituality and self-care and good eating and exercise, how do we keep it going?
That’s partly why I think we’ve all seen both personally and nationally and internationally, we see artists burn out, we see artists burn out all the time or fall apart in different ways. I think there’s so much to learn and so much to lean into each other about how do we do these things, how do we keep it going and to be willing to ask each other, to be willing to ask our other writer friends or actor friends or to hire a coach or to be in therapy or to go to your yoga class and do your meditation, how do you lean into those things that are going to sustain you through the crazy ups and downs of an absolutely crazy and probably always will be on some level crazy industry. That’s a conversation that I’m always in and that I’m really interested in helping foster and pass on because I don’t see people talking about that.
Film Courage: If you look at something let’s say, I know this has been a couple years with…(Watch the video interview on YouTube here).
About:
STEVE HARPER’s TV writing includes Co-Executive Producer duties on Tracker and D.C.’s Stargirl and wrote episodes of God Friended Me, Tell Me Your Secrets, American Crime and Covert Affairs. His web series SEND ME earned a 2016 Emmy Nomination for series lead Tracie Thoms. Through his company Your Creative Life he coaches writers, posts advice on YouTube and co-hosts The Secret Writer Podcast – heard in 21 countries. He graduated from Yale, the A.R.T. Institute at Harvard and the Juilliard playwriting program.
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