I am neither a plotter nor a pants-er, but an in-between-er. I do have an outline, and, generally, some idea of what's going to happen in a book and where the characters are going to wind up...but what always happens is the characters start to surprise me, and go their own way, and things happen that I never saw…

I had the most retweeted tweet of my life about that Slate article, which was, "Dear YA, don't let the bastards get you down, your friend, Chick Lit." Wendy McClure, who wrote THE WILDER LIFE, had the best tweet about it, where she said, "Oh, look, someone from Slate found a circa-2003 story, changed "chick lit" to…

Ooh, great question. When I started writing, I was a newspaper reporter. This was in the 1990's, back when you could be a newspaper reporter. So that's how I paid the bills. I did journalism by day, fiction by night.

Thank you for liking State of Georgia!

Before I was a novelist, I was a journalist...so one book a year does not actually feel incredibly burdensome! Generally, spring/summer are thinking time, summer and fall are writing time, fall into winter are revise-like-a-madwoman time, and then winter into spring is this weird, hybrid period where I'll be editing…

Hi everyone...is this thing on?

Hello! Posting a random response here just to make sure I'm logged in and whatnot.

See above...and, it's three! Back to the kids, and the work-in-progress for me! Thanks so much for such smart and thoughtful questions. Happy reading and happy writing!

I think escapism is part of it — if you're (barely) shopping at Target, maybe it's more fun to read about someone who's shopping at Prada? But that's something I've tried to be aware of in my books, and, while they've all had elements of escapism, and their share of wealthy characters, I've also had characters who…

Can't help you there — I am MFA-less.

I cover that in my "for the writers" section on www.jenniferweiner.com. I think, right now, I'd pursue a traditional publishing deal first, because traditional publishing can still get you things (like seeing your book in a bookstore) that self-publishing can't. But hey — self-publishing worked out fine for the 50…

Good q! My deal is, all my friends and loved ones get to read the book ahead of time, and if there's anything they object to, we discuss it, and I'll change it. The good news, though,is that villains rarely recognize themselves in print....because if they saw themselves as behaving that badly, they'd quit it, right?

Pretty much every day...and, even when I'm not writing, I'm thinking about writing - my characters, my story, what's going to happen next. And I'm lucky — I got to do the thing I wanted to do when I grew up. I was lucky to have parents who read to me, lucky to have teachers who encouraged me, and lucky to have readers…

Thanks so much! In terms of advice, just sit down and start writing...and put your writing out there. So many women are afraid to get on Twitter because someone's going to call them fat or stupid or unfunny, or to send a query letter to an agent because the agent is going to say no. But rejection is a part of the…

I wish I had some magic fairy dust you could sprinkle on your computer that could help you get started and help make your characters related...but I really believe that the difference between the people who SAY, "Oh, I could write a novel" and the people who actually do it is just pure cussed persistence. You sit in…

I'm a fan of the good old Ann Landers-endorsed, "Why do you ask?" Make them explain themselves. Make them say, "Why, we're asking when you intend to have babies because we believe that's the only thing of importance a woman can do!"

For GOODNIGHT NOBODY, I toured Juilliard, and saw a sign reading PLEASE DO NOT EMPTY YOUR SPIT VALVE ON THE FLOOR. That was too good not to use in the book!

I'm actually working on my first non-fiction piece right now! Think Bossypants meets Nora Ephron, crossed with Fran Lebowitz, going out for drinks with Jen Lancaster.

www.jenniferweiner.com/forthewriters. The entire saga is there, including the tale of the first agent I worked with, who said, "Does the heroine have to be FAT? No one wants to read a book about a lonely, pathetic FAT GIRL."

Absolutely, there are men who get it. (Again, I'd refer you to Ron Charles' Washington Post review of Jonathan Tropper's latest). Sadly, not many of those men seem to work at the New York Times. But I do believe that the times, they are a-changing. I think that if Jonathan Franzen had done the kind of whiny…