What you have to get used to as a writer is realizing that most of what you come up with is wrong for the show.

To be fair to ourselves, in almost every original script, the timing is actually worked out down to the minute.

I personally have more faith than the average writer in people's willingness to be complicated, and so I'm thrilled by what's happened. I'm elated at audiences' willingness to handle complexity. In some sense, I feel like my belief in what people are capable of is being validated.

To create a situation where each new episode has to start in the exact same place as the previous one, with the actors' hair in the exact same place, seemed crazy.

The idea that you could stitch together every detail episode to episode and preserve continuity for the length of a season and tell a story while using no time cuts, no flashbacks, nothing but pure real time just seemed too difficult.

I think ultimately what makes the show is not the reality but the drama.

As far as how important the real-life resonance of the stories is, I think it must play at least a small role in the show's success, because it gives the show this sense of suspense from the fact that it seems at least plausible.