When I was a kid, my favorite movies were the George Pal version of 'War Of The Worlds,' 'Them,' and 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers.' Those movies were scary! They haunted my nightmares for years, so when I started writing, I wanted to write a story that was just as big and just as scary.
One of my favorites is 'Parks and Recreation.' Great show; awesome writing; beautiful, diverse cast. They also have a very diverse writer's room, which I love.
I started off writing TV adverts. I saw those as rehearsals for a feature film.
My dream would be producing, maybe directing - definitely not writing - one feature film.
It was interesting to write ad films and scripts for TV shows before I moved on to writing a feature film. That helped me grow as a writer, and I also found out how long I could sit in front of a computer and see something through.
One of the horribly frustrating things about writing feature films is the rules everyone applies and says, 'You have to do this by the end of the first act and by the end of the second act you must introduce this.' As if there were rules to life or telling a story or the ways things happen, which of course there aren't.
Being in the public eye is part of what I do, and taking on a multitude of different projects - television, radio, fashion, writing or deep-sea diving - is a blessing. It is also how I pay my bills and fund my own skating, as I don't have a sponsor or financial help from my federation.
I always say, if a guy writes the same lead female character type over and over, we are not seeing their writing chops so much as their dating website wishlist.
I can't imagine writing a book without some strong female characters, unless that was a demand of the setting.
Writing is like carrying a fetus.
I want to do some fiction writing, I've had some pretty good luck with short stories, I'd like to do a couple of larger things.
Whether it's fiction or nonfiction, writing takes me to another world.
My work as a screenwriter has influenced my fiction. Writing screenplays forces you to consider many elements regarding story structure and other narrative devices that can be used to enhance the infinitely more complex demands of a novel.
I spent several years acquiring the obsessive, day-to-day discipline that's needed if you want to write professionally, then several more, highly valuable years studying fiction writing at the University of Iowa.
Fiction writing is just an excuse to go discover interesting things.
Medicine is a supremely useful profession. Fiction writing is not.
Maybe the example of Southern fiction writing has been so powerful that Southern poets have sort of keyed themselves to that.
I think it's Jerry's masterful fiction writing.
A decade in advertising exposed me to plenty of schemers and backstabbers. But honestly, advertising is wonderful training for fiction. Writing novels is much easier if you've ever tried to write a billboard.
If a stranger is writing something completely fictitious, or insulting me on a blog or a tabloid, I don't take it personally.
