I owe my success to my two families. If my father hadn't been willing to make sacrifices for me, I would have never won the role on 'Everybody Hates Chris'. I like working with my television family, too. We have a lot of love for each other.

I decided that I wanted to be an actress at the age of 7. This is something I've always known.

My being a writer and playing Scrabble are connected. If I have a good writing day, I'll take a break and play online Scrabble. My favorite word as a child was 'carrion,' before I knew what it meant. I later created crossword puzzles, which was a lot about puns, and how words would create these strange, strange things.

I don't mind playing my music live. It's fun. But what my real passion is is writing music.

In the commercial music world, the folk world, we sell records and concert tickets - this is the way I make a living. You go out, you make your art and hopefully people will put their money down for it. But it's getting hard. I have to be on the road so much to keep the lights on.

I wasn't in the art world at all as a kid; I was just creative, and we were always doing arts and crafts.