Idra Novey, Hannah Sanghee Park, Gregory Pardlo, and Mark Richard Talk to Olivia Clare About Multiple Genres - Los Angeles Review of Books

The screenwriting came much later, again coming from a need for money. In our second year of marriage, my wife was pregnant with our first son and we were broke. A woman I'd known from the writing classes at Ole Miss, where I'd taught, introduced my short stories to Robert Altman, who said one story in particular would make a great movie. When I heard that, I went to the library, checked out some books on screenwriting, checked out what scripts that had that matched whatever movies they had to rent, and taught myself screenwriting. I'd watch the film and read the script at the same time. Like chess, it was easy to learn and difficult to master.

I still find screenwriting the hardest genre in which to work, you're writing for so many different eyes looking for so many different things - executives, producers, actors, directors, all aspects of production - while still trying to maintain a compelling narrative. I hate writing in general, and I hate screenwriting in particular, but it's probably the most fun to have "done," in the way that the true satisfaction of any writing comes in having finished the goddamnned thing.