A script is so word-heavy, after trying to communicate so much verbally, I think you need a different outlet to give the verbal centre of your brain a chance to cool off.
I started writing when I started acting professionally because, with acting, there's so much time when you're not working, and there's so much rejection and so little you have control of. Writing is something that you can do, and no one can tell you not to.
As a writer, there are times when you have something to say, and yet no particular 'hook' upon which to hang the missive you are burning to release.
I write when I get bored, when I have nothing to do.
I've always sort of felt like what the Shins is, I guess, is a vehicle for my writing.
If I'm writing a furiously angry scene, I have to consciously snap out of it when I shut down the computer, or I find myself growling at my family.
Maybe I was 7 - I probably am exaggerating a little - and immediately was plunged into the fact that there was an official place to put your fantasies. Up until then I didn't know what I would do with them all. It was very exciting for me, and I began very, very early on.
Ever since I was a girl, I have written about one to five pages every day - on napkins, on scrap paper, in notebooks and tablets, on the walls in my room as a teenager, and in orange paint on the cheap white plastic blinds in my room.
I have to say, my family's always been incredibly open and encouraging of any way I might want to express myself. At a very young age, they accepted that my outlet would be writing, and comedic writing, and they were pretty accepting of that.
Once a week I would meet up with the coolest teacher and we'd go over my work. All my friends were like, Soooo... once a week at lunch you meet up with Mr. Schulenberg to talk about poetry. They all thought I was having sex with my teacher. But I really just loved to write and it was a nice outlet.
I have to write because if I don't get something down then after a while I feel it's going to bang the side of my head off.
If something comes up I might write about it, but without an outlet the whole thing winds down.
I suppose I have an active imagination, and writing allows me to live it out.
In the immediate aftermath of the separation I just wrote and wrote and wrote. And wrote and wrote and wrote. Thank God I had that as an outlet.
With writing, I can express myself, really, and share my ideas and just let my thoughts flow out.
I have no idea why I write. The old standards are: I like to express my feelings, stretch my imagination, earn money.
Well, I'd had the Fat Mattress earlier as a writing outlet for songs and that.
I've always felt so fortunate to have writing to turn to every day. I'm obsessed with it.
Writing was my route to creative expression, and I needed to write about the things that interested me.
Twitter is the most amazing medium for a comedy writer. I can't get in every idea I want on the show no matter how hard I try to bully the other writers, so it's a way of me getting out other comic ideas and immediately getting feedback.
