My first published work was when I was 19, in 'Playgirl.' It was an odd experience but exciting.

Giving shape to a painful experience is powerful because it helps us to see, first, how we got through it; second, how we can share it. The experience doesn't stay trapped within us, unspoken, curdling - instead, the art of arranging and transforming it reduces the burden. It no longer belongs to only you.

It's great being married to a writer. You live with someone who can read your work and help you.

Sure, 'An Inconvenient Truth' was my first documentary. What a wonderful experience. I saw Al Gore doing his slideshow presentation, and had this nutty idea that we had to make a movie out of it.

When I wrote my stories in elementary school, I signed them all 'Karen E. Bender' with the squiggly 'E.' I wanted, from an early age, to be a writer, and that name - that E - was a way of pretending I knew how to do it.

You sit at your computer for hours, then slave away at your job that you may or may not like. You don't know how to explain to them that the time when you feel alive or present is when you are writing.