Writer/director Jill Soloway is up for a Film Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay for Afternoon Delight, the story of Rachel, a stay-at-home mom who becomes obsessed with saving a stripper named McKenna. Here, Soloway shares why you’ll probably never find two characters talking about a third in one of her scripts and confesses her obsession with Christopher Guest.

Tune in to IFC at 10:00 pm (ET/PT) on March 1, 2014 to find out the winners of the 2014 Film Independent Spirit Awards.

Who was the first person you contacted when you heard you were nominated for a Spirit Award?

Mostly just received incoming texts, tweets and FBs from people who were following along. Every single person I knew seemed to be online at the moment the news was getting reported. There was no one left to call!

Will you approach writing your acceptance speech in the same way you do a screenplay?  

I have already come up with a great joke for my acceptance speech and it came to me when all great lines do—in the shower. If you want to hear it, I guess I’d better win.

What was one thing that you learned while working on Afternoon Delight?

I learned that my script was really just a map to get the actors and crew to have an agreed-upon notion of where and when to show up. But in terms of the words on the page, there was no piece of dialogue, no line, nary a moment that HAD to be there. Scenes revealed themselves as we ran them, blocked them. Sometimes all of the dialogue could go if the intention of the scene was clear without words.

How many drafts did it go through?

I probably wrote about 20 or 30.

Was there one breakthrough moment that helped everything fall into place?

My producers, Jen Chaiken and Sebastian Dungan, pushed me to re-think the first act based on problems we were having in the third. What does the protagonist have to “return” to? At what moment did Rachel begin her journey? Exactly what is her later action repentance for? That brought me to a new idea—that of the private dance in the first act. The intimacy Rachel and McKenna found in that scene and the braid of emotions Rachel felt (mother, sister, customer) gave me a thematic organizing principle for the whole movie.

What was the toughest scene in Afternoon Delight for you to write?

I tried a whole bunch of endings involving McKenna coming back to see Rachel and Rachel seeking out McKenna but nothing felt right. So we left it with those two characters drifting into their own next chapters, with no face-to-face resolution. I’ll always wonder if they had more to say to one another…

What actor would you most like to see perform something you’ve written?

Christopher Guest!

What was the first story you ever wrote?

I wrote a tale for my best friend about an imaginary encounter we had at the mall with Christopher Atkins and Matt Dillon. There was tandem making out in the glass elevator, I’m pretty sure.

 What’s the best advice about writing that you’ve ever heard?

Any time two characters are talking about a third person, the scene is a piece of shite. (Mamet!)

What’s the worst advice about writing that you’ve ever heard?

Writers write. (My ex-agent!) Actually, sometimes we do, sometimes we don’t. Sure, it’s good if we do. But sometimes we dream, we drift, our fields go fallow. That’s all necessary as well.

What is the greatest line of dialogue in the history of cinema?

Anything Nigel Tufnel said in Spinal Tap. Oh lordy, I’m back on Christopher Guest. Won’t someone find a way for me to get Christopher Guest’s attention!?