In the past, I'll admit, I've enjoyed being compared to the protagonists in my screenplays.

Here's my unsolicited advice to any aspiring screenwriters who might be reading this: Don’t ever agonize about the hordes of other writers who are ostensibly your competition. No one else is capable of doing what you do.

I try to avoid Twitter. I occasionally can't resist the siren call of email.

Shoulda gone to China. They give away babies like free iPods. They put them in guns and shoot them out at sporting events.

The things that I write are autobiographical in a surreal sense, like when you have a dream and you go to the doctor's office, but then you turn around and it's actually your childhood home and the doctor has turned into Ryan Reynolds.

I know most people don't like to be around teenagers but I do. I'm one of the only people I can think of who can't wait for my kid to be a teenager. I think being a teenager is one of the most wonderful things in the world. I really enjoyed it - just this heightened emotional state where everything is beautiful and everything is new and you're convinced that you're really going to break the mould and be different from your parents. And the best part is that you have so much more time that you didn't have as a child.

I've been told that I'm incompetent, socially retarded, maladjusted. I still know that I couldn't function in reality. Los Angeles is a good place for me.