MO: My process is pretty fast — the timeline from “I’ve got an idea” to published piece is usually a few hours. I have a bunch of titles I throw in a Google doc and about half of them eventually become a post; the other half just languish until I forget what they mean. 

But part of the fun of having my own site is I can just write something and publish it and see what happens without having to go through any other stages. It doesn’t always work out, but I like learning from my mistakes in public; I like seeing what works and what falls flat and how certain tweaks can make an idea better. 

SA: When did you feel you found your voice, in terms of your comedy writing? Was there a particular piece you wrote that gave you an ‘aha!’ moment? 

MO: Probably when I started doing the “Texts From” series over at The Hairpin. Edith Zimmerman was such a weird and wonderful and significant influence on my writing, and she was really supportive of the work I published there. I think that’s when I finally started writing often enough that I could really get a sense for what I liked doing the best.