I rarely write by myself.
I took a clown class at NYU - that's where I met June Diane Raphael, my writing partner and best friend.
I don't think I ever got the hang of the writers' room. I love collaborating with people, but I really do my best work alone, and I think I would want to - if I did something again, I think I'd want to take total ownership the way Aaron Sorkin or David Kelley does.
I wonder if I ever thought of an ideal reader... I guess when I was in my 20s and in New York and maybe even in my early 30s, I would write for my wife Janice... mainly for my poet friends and my wife, who was very smart about poetry.
When I'm in a songwriting phase, it's a phase. I don't just suddenly feel inspired and then write a song, because I always write with a co-writer.
I never co-write. I've tried it before, and I just can't do it.
I never want to co-write. People never just write a quarter of a book, do they? I don't think you can get your story across.
I've been writing the show with Nigel Coan, the director of 'Luxury Comedy', and Tom Meeten. Three's good. With two, you can lock horns a bit. On your own, you're not sure whether what you've made is any good. I don't know how people write novels. I would go mad.
Collaborating on lyrics has never worked for me.
I had never really co-written. I thought it was weak or something if I needed to collaborate.
I started writing sketches with Dennis Kelly, who I ended up writing 'Pulling' with. We entered a BBC competition and did quite well, then started writing bits for other people's shows. You wheedle your way in, write pilots and eventually you end up writing a sitcom.
Screenwriting is a much more collaborative effort. When you write a novel, it's just you, with input from your editor.
I do outlines when I'm writing with someone, but they also need to have a certain amount of freedom.
I know of a few writers who are husband and wife teams.
I don't really write all that well with others.
As an author and a burgeoning screenwriter, the fact of the matter is I cannot do this alone.
I love that I wrote with all kinds of different people.
There's a lot of comics writers out there whose work I appreciate and who are nice guys. I really want to work with guys I really respect and enjoy.
You get to Hollywood and you are in the land of big money where they don't like to see only one screenwriter's name. It's much better if you've got four or five.
In the world of book writing, there's a few people, maybe, where you have close relationships. In TV, there are so many more relationships, and they're all so critical.
Well, I would definitely give up performing... But I would still sit down in an office and pretend to write with Dawn, even if we never produced anything, because it's just hilarious. I would miss that.
Collaboration on a book is the ultimate unnatural act.
I am writing things on my own, but I really believe co-writing makes you a better writer.
I used to think that I could be successful if I pretended to be a 23-year-old black woman. I wanted to find a young black woman who would be willing to go in on this with me. I would write her novels, and then she would do the touring. I always thought I was too old and the wrong color.
What a heartbreaking job it is trying to combine authors for their own protection... the first lesson I learned was that when you take the field for the authors you will be safer without a breastplate than without a backplate.
