That’s the problem with unsolicited advice. Most of the time, the advice-giver knows nothing about you or your situation.

Is anything harder in the world of fictional storytelling than coming up with an ending to a mystery that no one sees coming?

Here, the sun never shone. It was blotted out by an eternal fog, a white-grey sheet pulled over a town which had long ago flatlined, but whose body remained here, somehow forgotten and forever awaiting an autopsy.

Our fields can be harsh, and the struggle is real, but that doesn’t have to be all we are.

Damaged people are always going to twist any message to confirm whatever they already believe. But we have to recognize that those are twisted narratives.

This process is frustrating, agonizing, soul-crushing, but also rewarding, exciting, and I cannot imagine doing anything else.

A good writer pushes the reader to draw on their common experiences and fill in as much story as is logically possible while they’re in the gutter.

Mass takes place in the aftermath of a violent tragedy that affects the lives of two couples in different ways. What both couples have experienced is unimaginable.

Does the Bond franchise continue along the grittier Craig path? Or does it turn Bond back into more of the gentleman spy from the original Fleming books?

If anyone wants to give me shit and bring up the "West Wing" example, let me ask you this—is your name Aaron Sorkin? No? That’s what I thought. Pipe down.

Some call it gamesmanship, some call it cheating, some call it plain old knowing the rules. But if you don’t know the rules, you can’t bend them to your advantage.

But to actually direct—something scripted no less—felt like a sham. People went to school for that. Or they had climbed the proverbial ladder to earn it.

I remember projects where the writers excitedly discuss their stories. Joy, heartache, and love of the story make all the difference.

I think people can relate to feeling so desperate and invisible that they might do something they think they would never do.

Rewrite hell, I’ve come to understand, isn’t what someone does to you, but what you do to yourself as a writer.