I've only seen images of Ryan Lochte — I've seen pictures, I've seen him swimming, but I've never heard him speak. Then again, does it really matter whether he can string together coherent sentences? As far as I can tell, the most successful bachelors have a kind of bland handsomeness, plus abs you can grate cheese…

Cannie: The Menopause Years! I'll have to see what happens, but I do find myself wondering about Joy, and what kind of young woman she'll become.

Um. Well. I could lie and say I've never had my heart broken, but the truth was, I had my heart completely shattered in the late 1990's (it was a bad year for hair, too). It was one of those breakups where you're on the fence about the relationship while you're in it, but once it's over you're convinced you've lost…

Thanks! I'm not sure where the idea came from, but shooting the ad was one of the most fun things I've done all year. I'm assuming Jeff E. had a wind machine, and all the power of vaunted publishing house Farrar Straus Giroux behind him. I had a four-year-old and a blow-dryer. "Higher! Aim it higher! Mommy needs to…

Just finished GONE GIRL, which I'm still thinking about. Loved THE WIND THROUGH THE KEYHOLE (I'm a huge Stephen King fan). Re-read Michele Huneven's BLAME, which I highly recommend. I COULDN'T LOVE YOU MORE by Jillian Medoff was a heartbreaker...and THESE GIRLS by Sarah Pekkanen was single-girls-in-NYC fun.

There's a little bit of me in every character I write. Even the villains. Even the guys. I'd say the inspiration comes from real life — from my hilariously dysfunctional family, my friends, my daughters, just...watching the world. I remember taking my second daughter to preschool and watching the first-time moms…

Thanks! I had a blast writing it, and Ruthie's one of my favorite heroines. So we'll see. Or, really, I'll see if she starts talking to me again and has anything interesting to say.

Because double standards are persistent and almost impossible to root out. Although I do think things are changing (check out the Washington Post's Ron Charles' lament about "whiny male" novels last weekend.

I guess I'd say it can't hurt — there are agents who will always be impressed with a Park Slope zip code — but the Internet has turned publishing into a placeless business, so NYC isn't a necessity. On the Internet, nobody knows you live in Dubuque, and wrote your first novel in a Spice Girls nightgown. (Not that I…

I have about 20 pages of advice for aspiring writers on my website, www.jenniferweiner.com/forthewriters. Bottom line: read constantly, write constantly, be prepared for rejection, and don't beat yourself up too much. That's why God made reviewers. And anonymous Twitter trolls.

Possibly? Yes. Easy? No. It helps if you go to the write schools (Iowa Writers' Workshop!), and surround yourself with the right people who can give you the right blurbs that convince the New York Times and other places to review you seriously. However, you can count on those reviews saying things like "even though…

If you're me, you send an early copy of your book to my brother. He gets it to a smart lady producer (Carla Hacken of Fox 2000). She gets it to a great screenwriter (Susannah Grant, who did ERIN BROCKOVICH and EVER AFTER), and a great director (Curtis Hanson of EIGHT MILE and WONDER BOYS fame), and then Cameron Diaz…