By luck I mean, when opportunity meets preparation.

My advice is that if you really want to be a screenwriter, get out here and be ready to take no for an answer many times until you find your way through it and are fortunate enough to get something made.

It's a tough time for screenwriters right now, because fewer movies are getting made. I'm enjoying television so much. It offers opportunities for writers to be in a writers' room and work their way up. It's somewhat easier because there's more of a community. There are so many screenwriters with incredible stories to tell, so I hope there will be some kind of shift in the business where very few types of movies are now made by the studios. There needs to be different budgets for different audiences; not everything having to be a huge opening weekend.

The movie I've watched a million times is 'A Face in the Crowd,' directed by Elia Kazan, starring Andy Griffith and Patricia Neal. I first saw this movie, I guess I was in my early 20s. I'd never heard of it, and somebody told me about it, and I watched it and was just completely jaw-droppingly shocked at how current it was.

Always, in all circumstances, wear comfortable shoes. You never know when you may have to run for your life.

I love to start characters in a place where you think you know them. We can make all kinds of assumptions about them and think they have no redeeming qualities, but like everyone, they're complex.

We get the best people we can get and it turns out a lot of them are women. I've said this before If you hire people solely on their merit you wind up hiring a lot of women. I wonder how many other shows even come close to our numbers.