On my walks, that’s when the good ideas come. The kind of hard, gritty work is when you’re sitting at the computer and it’s kind of intense and you’re kind of in super control of it – the walks are when you let go. That’s when the really big breakthroughs come in, and it’s very strange. Maria Semple Read Quote
In a lot of ways, TV writing taught me how to be a good storyteller. I learned about dialogue, scenes, moving the plot forward. Maria Semple Read Quote
Mad About You’ fit my sensibility the most of any show that I worked on, and as a result, it was really fun. It felt like a very natural fit. Maria Semple Read Quote
I think because I try to keep things as real as I can, or I try to start from a place of reality, I almost don’t have the imagination to write a book that’s not set where I am. Maria Semple Read Quote
I keep an elaborate calendar for my characters detailing on which dates everything happens. I’m constantly revising this as I go along. It gives me the freedom to intricately plot my story, knowing it will at least hold up on a timeline. Maria Semple Read Quote
My first novel didn’t sell well. It was really painful and humiliating and shocking to me. Maria Semple Read Quote
In TV writing, I felt like Gulliver being tied down by the Lilliputians. There’s so much more freedom in fiction writing. Maria Semple Read Quote
