Maria Semple

I was good at story, but I was never really good at jokes.

And there always felt like there was something wrong

with me as a comedy writer.

I felt like I was kind of wearing my shoes on the wrong feet or something.

And I certainly never watched TV.

I wouldn't go home and watch TV.

I never watched it.

Instead, I would go home and read books.

I was an English major in college.

I still self-identify as an English major.

And that's really what I loved was books.

and so it it even though tv taught me some really amazing things and i love my time there in many ways and they really teach you story in tv that's your job is to just be breaking story and working on scenes and i think i really kind of developed a story muscle while i was working in tv it wasn't until i met a novelist whose books i really liked and i talked to him

all about how cool it was that he was writing books and what was it like.

That was so special.

And he said to me, why don't you write a novel if you like them so much?

And I just thought that novels were for other people to write.

They were for kind of more serious or dignified people to write, that there was like no access for me to become a fiction writer.

Totally on the pedestal.

Yes.

And I'd never written a word of prose in my life.