I think we're all insecure about something, but there's a way to deal with those emotions healthily by seeking professional help earlier on.

Shania Twain and Martina McBride and all these wonderful women were saying that it's awesome to be a woman, and it's awesome to be a confident woman. Obviously, I could never compare myself to them, and I want to be my own thing, but I think that message is what I want to say as an artist.

I'm still learning to love myself.

I don't mind if people say I was on 'American Idol,' because I was, and that is a part of my past, and I'm super proud of it, but I don't want that to be all there is to me.

It was actually a women's writing group I belonged to in graduate school that gave me the courage to move from poetry to fiction.

On every film, there are producers all over the place, and everyone's got to have an opinion. I think the screenplay is a beautiful form with great potential, but the environment around it is awful for a writer.

My dad is Scottish, and he read in the newspaper about the plight of the Scottish Freshwater Mussel, which is a real thing - like, a very real, serious conservation issue. And he's a writer, and he was going to do a film about a Glaswegian gangster, and then I stole the idea and turned it into a romantic comedy.

My father told us all the time: to become a good writer takes writing. Because the more you do it, the better you get at it. It's like bull-riding. You can't do it once, you know. You've got to practice it and practice it.