I'm glad people see some of the stories that way. I see where they're coming from, although none of the stories are specifically intended to arouse. There is a gender divide on the short story "The Girlfriend Game" - women seem to consider it "sexy" but men usually find it uncomfortable.
I write out of enthusiasm. Momentum that comes from a new idea. Eagerness to explore. I also write out of fear - fear of losing an idea - fear of feeling stagnant.
I encourage all novelists to move to TV right now, that is the way to go. I was living in New York working at a bank as a day job about seven years ago. I was writing novels at night and decided, "Wow, there's so much great TV, and they're telling the complex, interesting, psychologically nuanced stories that, as a novelist, you dream of telling. And it's a healthy, exciting, thriving medium - that's where I need to be."
I was tired of working in an office and I wanted to make a living telling stories. There are not many people who find a way to do this.
Los Angeles is more hospitable to writers [Than NY]. It's less claustrophobic. It feels more unpredictable and dangerous, and the landscape is less structured. You see coyotes lurking all over the place. It just feels wilder and more dangerous.
Sometimes I try to meditate, which I hope will help, but it doesn't really. But lots of times my dreams have the seed of an intriguing story.
Horror is so basic. You'd get an adrenaline jolt from watching your mom get gored by a woolly mammoth. A horror movie gives you the adrenaline without having to have your mom get gored.
I love horror movies. I consider myself a horror author, sometimes.
Fiction and screenwriting blend for me. I feel like being a TV writer/screenwriter has definitely made my fiction writing better, although I have less time to do it.
In fiction, I have a residual guilt when I focus on story over language or mood or whatever - the more "literary" things. In screenwriting, I don't have that guilt because story is the only thing. Character, dialogue, everything else - they feed into and drive story.
The Shield made me realize there were great opportunities for writers in TV.
We're lucky to be in the middle of a TV renaissance. It's the healthiest storytelling medium in our culture.
I own some bugs encased in lucite or something. I also have a big cat's eye - a fake one - made for a taxidermist. I really like animals.
I feel like having an actual taxidermy-ed mammal would get gross, like its hair would get dirty and stuff.
Yeah, most guys don't like to think about going to a bar with a girlfriend and watching her leave with someone else.
I rarely exercise at all, except I have some hand weights that I'll lift idly while I'm watching TV. I did do some push-ups last week and somehow hurt my shoulder.
I don't think I've ever bench-pressed anything in my life. Until about two years ago I swam a mile almost every day. Then I stopped and I lost a lot of weight because my appetite was less. I'm not skinny now - I'm spindly. I eat an extremely simple diet - mostly salmon, avocado, feta cheese, chicken, eggs, peanut butter, blueberries, and quinoa.
I think the reason the stories are briskly paced, when they are, is that I like story. I like stories where things happen and there are surprises and reversals, in addition to vivid characters and a memorable voice. So those are the kinds of stories I try to write. And it turns out that's pretty much the only kind of writing that works for TV. It's a medium that just devours story, demands surprises and reversals. So my sensibility is suited to TV storytelling, at least as we think of it today.
I don't really think in terms of the future of literature. I think literature will be around "forever" - but in a relatively niche way, like jazz and poetry, although probably more widely consumed than jazz and poetry since it's fundamentally a narrative form. And I think that's important and places like Word Riot and 'The New York Tyrant' and 'n+1' will be responsible for keeping it alive.
I'm not disciplined in terms of scheduling. I work best late at night, but I can't do that when I'm on a TV show - our hours are roughly 10-6:30, so I have to go to sleep at a reasonable hour. So I'll sometimes write fiction for an hour or two in the evenings, or several hours on the weekend afternoons - unless I'm actively writing a script for the show I'm working on, in which case there's no time to write fiction at all.
