With the blockbuster TV show in its fifth season, Gossip Girl has firmly cemented its place as one of the most successful young adult franchises of our time. But the author of the fiction series that spawned the show has sobering words for authors hoping to do the same with their titles: “just go write a screenplay.”

“I really think it’s to a book’s detriment to think of it as, ‘Oh, this is going to be a great movie.’ It’s hard!” Gossip Girl creator Cecily von Ziegesar said  in mediabistro’s So What Do You Do? interview. “I think the best thing to do is write a book thinking no one’s going to read it.  It’s certainly not going to be made into a movie, and I’m just doing this because I have to write this book, because I really want to write this book. I’m not writing this because it’s going to be a huge hit. The most successful books were not meant to be; they came out of nowhere.”

Click here for the full interview.