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So I started to relax and would work on my act eight hours a day, sitting at a desk writing at my grandmother's house, and I would put on Richard Pryor Live on Long Beach and would play it like a loop and think and write.

I'd get home at 3:30 A.M. from the bar after my shift ended at 1. I'd write jokes, film it, and then sleep. So I did that for two years.

I would get up at 3 in the morning and write. Or sometimes I would write at midnight. Or I would write when my child napped. It wasn't a burden. I was so enthused about what I was doing at the time that I really didn't mind.

It was a challenge for me to do a plot because I'd been an essayist and a journalist. I had to be vigilant about moving things along and being entertaining.

I would go to work from 9 to 6, go home, nap for two hours, then write from 8 to 2 a.m.

I would be in a room full of people being loud and running around, and I'd be in the corner just playing with the wall. So I was very, very quiet, but when I really got into the arts, that opened me up.

I was studying English, as you will, in the day, and five nights a week, I would be at the cinema. That continued throughout my 20s, which was also the 1980s - there was a lot of really good films coming out then.

In history class, I wrote a poem, 'The Royalists and the Roundheads.' I would write poems about driftwood in art class and little stories about the sun, moon, and stars in science class. Since not many kids were writing in class, I got away with it.