I spend most of my days pacing around, muttering that I have no ideas, feeling like I'm walking a plank.

First scenes are super-important to me. I'll spend months and months pacing and climbing the walls trying to come up with the first scene. I drive for hours on the freeway.

I'm very physical. When I'm writing, I'm playing all the parts; I'm saying the lines out loud, and if I get excited about something - which doesn't happen very often when I'm writing, but it's the greatest feeling when it does - I'll be out of the chair and walking around, and if I'm at home, I'll find myself two blocks from my house.

She was pacing and walking in circles. We didn't know what was wrong with her.

I like writing idealistically, romantically and swashbucklingly.

While I was doing 'The Newsroom,' I always had the news on on different networks on different TVs around my house and around my office.