Robin Swicord: Hello. This is Robin. Do you have any questions for me?

Robin Swicord: I write first thing in the morning because my mind is clear and I have good energy. When I was first starting to write, I wrote at night because I had to work during the day to support myself, but when I began to make money with my screenplays, I switched to a day schedule. Sometimes when the day hasn't gone well, I sneak back at night for a surprise attack and do a little more writing.

Robin Swicord: Ideas come to us through observation and thinking. Something will capture my attention or my imagination and I will find myself thinking about it. Sometimes I will think about it in terms of a story or sometimes I'll have an idea for a character and if I find that I can't stop thinking about these people or this story, I'll begin to make notes and outline a project.

Robin Swicord: I don't have a website and I almost never use the Internet for writing. Occasionally I will use it to order a book that relates to my research or sometimes I will search for a piece of information that I'm too lazy to go to the library to find out. Mostly I use my computer for word processing.

Robin Swicord: The wardrobe. That isn't original. Another writer said that, but I've quoted him because it was so truthful! The greatest thing about being a writer is you make your own hours and you don't have to get out of your pajamas.

Robin Swicord: I identify with every character that I write about, even the really mean ones and even the really smart ones and even the really nice ones.

Robin Swicord: I was very lucky in that for a brief period of time, Disney decided to encourage writers to direct and they did this by allowing their executives to select a writer and give that writer enough money to make a short film. Gaye Hirsch was kind enough to produce a short film that I had written about my beloved grandmother. The experience of making this film was unmitigated joy, but unfortunately, because of the contractual constraints with Disney, the film cannot be distributed or seen anywhere except at festivals. It was called "The Red Coat" and it starred veteran actress Teresa Wright, who in her youth worked with Hitchcock and Kazan.

Robin Swicord: I'm lucky enough to be able to do both in my career. I just adapted a book called "Mermaids Singing" by Lisa Carey, but I am about to write an original screenplay; a comedy, called "Loco For Lotto." I love adapting other peoples' stories. I feel like an actress inhabiting a role as I try to take on the mindset of the author, but I also love to write the stories that I find rattling around in my head.

Robin Swicord: The writing usually takes me three or four months, but sometimes I do research for a long time before I begin writing. In "Little Women," I read extensively in 19th century history and letters for about 6 months before I began writing the screenplay.

Robin Swicord: I'm glad I have the company of someone who understands how difficult it is to work in the business of filmmaking, plus sometimes he and I get to write together, which feels like an extended play date for Nick and for me. I think we are both understanding of each other's special foibles when it comes to needing extra time on a screenplay or being distracted at the dinner table because we are mentally writing. I can't imagine not being married to someone who would understand me so deeply.

Robin Swicord: I am preparing to direct the film "Mermaids Singing" and I am continuing to try and get my film "Thing of Beauty" cast and while I am trying to move those two movies forward I am at work on a comedy about a Hollywood couple whose housekeeper wins the lottery.

Robin Swicord: It's difficult to get good movies made. It's difficult for anyone to bring high quality work to the screen, but it is especially difficult for women. In any given year, the number of women who get their movies made make up only about 8 percent of the writers who are represented on the screen. Things are getting better for women, but at a glacial pace. It is a problem that is quietly acknowledged in the film business, but is generally not talked about openly.

Robin Swicord: I have a feeling I haven't achieved either one of those things.

Robin Swicord: I think I've been extremely fortunate in that Christine Bell, who wrote "The Perez Family," and Alice Hoffman, who wrote the novel "Practical Magic," and Lisa Carey, who wrote "Mermaids Singing," were all generous to me when I called them up and introduced myself as the writer of the movie. Christine Bell took me on a research trip through Cuban Miami. It was tremendously helpful. And Alice Hoffman didn't seem to hold it against me when I moved the setting of her book from a setting in Boston to an island in the Atlantic. I think it can be awkward if the writer of the novel feels competitive with the screenwriter but I have never had that experience. Right now, I am getting notes from Lisa Carey whom I sent the screenplay as soon as I had finished Draft One. I consider the novelist a valuable resource.

Robin Swicord: I hope that's true and I'm flattered that you think so. I watch people all the time. I'm one of those children who never listened when my mother said, "Don't stare." I love human behavior, and when I write my characters, I want them to be like you and me, only much worse or much better or much funnier. I wish I could tell you a shortcut. You just have to observe people and receive them and try to bring your understanding of human beings to the page.

Robin Swicord: I like this question so much better than the usual question "What is your favorite movie?" My favorite movie tends to be the last movie that I've just seen. I think the last movie that I really liked quite a lot was "Traffic." I'm so impressed by the script and also by the fact that the director was also the cinematographer. He used a pseudonym.

Robin Swicord: If you mean an unknown writer, the one thing you probably don't want to do is spend a lot of money Xeroxing and mailing your scripts blindly to any agent you see mentioned in Variety. People are always looking for a good script and a good idea. Ideas and well-written screenplays are the currency of the film making business. If you put all your ideas on paper in letter form and send letters to agents asking them if they will read your screenplay, eventually, someone will be intrigued and request that you mail them a copy of the script. It takes a long time to attract someone's attention usually, but you can also enter screenwriting contests where professionals are the judges, usually. The Austin Heart of Film Festival in October has a good screenwriting contest.

Robin Swicord: You are talking to someone who spends several months making notes on character and story before she begins "letting it flow." I am a monster for preparation. Sometimes, while you are making notes about a character or while you are describing certain scenes to yourself dialogue will begin to come to you. It's fine to jot that down, but keep planning until you really feel ready to write. It will save you so much time later, instead of having to write five drafts and getting sick of the project. You will write fewer drafts and rely less on the process of discovery while you are doing the difficult work of crafting scenes. A little discovery along the way every day is good, but there is a lot of discovery that happens in the planning process and for myself, I find that period of planning to be very fruitful.

Robin Swicord: I don't really know anyone who does. I don't.

Robin Swicord: I'm lucky in having the support of a wonderful agent. I can't say that she inspired me to pursue my career as a writer, but she has certainly supported me emotionally and given me good advice. I met her in 1980. Her name is Merrily Kane. She is the closest thing to a true literary agent that I have met working in Hollywood.

Robin Swicord: I was a bookworm too! Reading is the foundation for writing.

Robin Swicord: Pull up a chair in front of your computer, your typewriter or your pad of paper and go to work. Do it every day. Don't do it part time. Do it all the time. Sit down and begin to create worlds. There is no other way to go at it.

Robin Swicord: I have an inner mantra, which I have kept secret until this very moment. Which is: "Please get out of my way." You have to guard your work from the "help" of others. However, if you are writing for money, the person who is paying you has the right to give you their thoughts. When you agree to write something for someone else, in some sense, they become your collaborator. The difficult thing as an artist writing in a commercial world is to be able to write the things that need to be written while fulfilling the requirements of the job. I find that if I hear the same note or criticism from more than one person, I had better pay attention. Sometimes, the note is only describing the symptom and not the actual problem. It is your job as a writer to diagnose the problem and to listen to others regarding the symptoms when something isn't working quite right. Having to take direction from others, for me, is the greatest argument for giving oneself an adequate period of preparation before beginning to write. The more you know about your characters, the story, your scenes, the tone and the intention of what you are writing, the more you will be able to identify misguided advice later-- in other words, you will know what to ignore.

Robin Swicord: My friend Amy Pascal had taken a job running a new but short-lived studio called Turner Pictures which was later absorbed by Warner Brothers. Amy bought the book and then called me up and asked me if I would adapt it. Unfortunately, after the project moved to Warner Brothers, I lost control of it and I was rewritten by other Warner Brothers employees.

Robin Swicord: My first attempt to write a screenplay was when I was twenty and I made the mistake of showing it to a former English professor, who told me in exquisite detail how very terrible it was. I did not try to write another screenplay until I was 26 and in the intervening years, I wrote two plays, which were on Off Broadway in New York. Through the encouragement of the agent Merrily Kane, who read my plays, I wrote a screenplay called "Stock Cars for Christ," which she sold almost as soon as I had written it.

Robin Swicord: I used to keep a journal for many years. I wrote down all of my precious thoughts. And then I had children. Now I keep notebooks that mostly reflect my thoughts about ongoing projects or things that I would like to be writing.

Robin Swicord: I wish that stories could just happen. It would be so easy. Narrative is so important in movies. I think that it is equally important in novels, although there are plenty of novels which have a thin narrative line and rely on other kinds of discursive writing for their artistry. However, stories in movies are "plot driven." What happens next is important. Narrative is something that can be learned, although all kinds of other writing techniques can be learned but possibly not taught. One of the ways that I learned about narrative was through watching videotapes with the sound off. I recommend this as a technique for people interested in editing as well. If you watch a familiar movie with the sound down, the bones of the narrative stand out because you don't get sucked into dialogue or character or humor and you begin to see the secret force of the narrative that pushes through the film. Last year, I reread Aristotle's "Poetics." When I read it in college, I did not understand a tenth of what I was reading. When I read it now, I see that the most simple and basic rule of narrative are laid out.

Robin Swicord: A writer's experience can differ by quite a lot. The director of "Little Women," Gillian Armstrong changed almost nothing in the screenplay, although she did move a scene from the beginning of the film to a little later in the film during the editing process, but on "Practical Magic," my script was almost obliterated by the director's ideas. My husband is having a good experience with Michael Apted, who is shooting Nick's script "Enough." One of the reasons that writers are so adamantly requesting more creative rights in this year's negotiation with the studios is that we feel that movies would be better if writers' work were more respected.

Robin Swicord: Again, I think that preparation is the key. If you spend time thinking about these people as being, for instance, individual members in one family, you know that they have their individual ways of expressing themselves or reacting to a problem. The more you see your characters as individuals, and the more unique traits you give them, the more easily they will separate for you. In early or beginning writing, I sometimes see that the writer is more invested in one character-- the "autobiographical" character-- than in the other people in the story. You have to be careful to invest yourself in every one of the characters as if you are on a stage playing each role.

Robin Swicord: I have not done enough directing to give you a very good answer, but I don't think from my limited experience that directing is too different from writing; although in writing you are creating something from nothing and in directing, you are trying to guide others into fulfilling what has already been laid out in the script. Directing is an exhausting job because the hours are quite long, and the job involves persuading or coercing people to do the job that you've hired them to do. In writing, the only person you have to boss around is yourself.

Robin Swicord: Writers' contact with actors is usually fairly limited. Actors have a difficult job that requires a great deal of concentration on the set. On the set, they mostly deal with the director, so unless the writer and the director are the same person, there is no reason to speak to an actor. During a relatively short period of time before filming commences, a writer might be consulted during the initial read-through or the rehearsing of scenes. This is true in the theatre as well, although the rehearsal period is much longer.

Robin Swicord: Think big! Thank you for inviting me to talk to you. I hope you heard something of value. Don't take all your advice from one person though!