>> If someone wants to be a writer, they have to start writing.
That's all.
It's a muscle.
I believe it's a muscle you have to develop and exercise, as you would any muscle.
Yes, if you are writing a comedy, do you have to have a sense of humor?
Yeah. It will help, because you'll know where the jokes are.
If you're writing drama, do you have to have a good sense of story and character?
Absolutely.
But mostly, you have to just keep writing.
If you've gotten as far enough as to think you want to be a writer,
it's probably because you can do one of those things well.
But then you have to keep writing, and you have to watch.
Live life.
I always think that writers are at a disadvantage if they've done nothing
but study writing all through school, and done nothing but taking writing classes
and MFAs and whatevers in Writing.
They're probably better technical writers than anybody else.
But unless they've had a crappy summer job, unless they've had classes that they've hated,
unless they've had, you know, life experiences, where their parents said, "If you want to stay
at home, you've got to get a job," and you're a bank teller...
that's where the stuff comes from.
To be successful in television, you just have to keep doing it.
You have to be able to swallow your pride.
You have to be able to know when you've done a good job and appreciate it,
even if no one else got to see it.
You have to, also, be able to convey how much you like what you're doing.
You know, whether you want to call it networking,
but whether you're meeting other people at your level, whether you're talking
to the studio -- and it's not sucking up.
Everybody knows what sucking up is and is the least attractive thing a human being can do.
But if you're just friendly, if you're open, if you realize that the people at the networks
and studios are just like you -- they're just trying to do their job.
Everybody's trying to make the show the best show.
So, if it's not non-adversarial, if you can actually have a conversation,
if they say to you, "We don't like that beat with the character, what she's doing,"
instead of going, "Well, I like it," say, "What do you --
you think she was coming off too bitchy or was she too stupid or too forceful?"
And then it's a conversation.
And you become friends.
And that's -- so your success -- and also you can't measure your success
against anybody else's.