I don't try and write strong female characters or strong male characters, I just try and write, hopefully, strong characters and sometimes they happen to be female.

What I'm still grappling with and learning how to do is to be looking and thinking cinematically, having come from television.

All the times I've been lucky enough to be a part of a show that's actually gotten on the air, it's always that same mixture of excitement and utter fear.

I mean, my dad's a television producer, and I knew I could get a job as an assistant or a reader with one of his friends, but it wasn't exactly what I wanted to do.

My kids have never seen me scream at anybody. They've never seen an argument. There's never been even a cold silence. And those are things that I grew up with because my parents did end up divorcing.

My father is my biggest literary influence. Recently, I've been looking through his letters. He was in the National Guard when I was a child, and whenever he left, he would write to me. He wrote letters to me all through college, and we still correspond. His letters, and my mother's, are one of my life's treasures.

If I ask you, 'What do you want out of life?' and you say something like, 'I want to be happy and have a great family and a job I like,' it's so ubiquitous that it doesn't even mean anything. Everyone wants that.

It is critical that parents and other trusted adults initiate conversations with kids about underage drinking well in advance of the first time they are faced with a decision regarding alcohol.