She’s got the write stuff. Rachel Shukert is the pen and producer behind GLOW, The Baby-Sitters Club, and the upcoming season of The Handmaid’s Tale (so basically, all the guilty culprits of our nightly binge). But when she’s not making us laugh / cry / feel all the feels, she’s teaching us how to follow the quill stroke. (Using the keyboard on your laptop is fine, too.)

We called the Nebraska native to get exclusive deets on her hit productions, to ask if her vision of Ann M. Martin’s beloved stories are for kids or adults (spoiler: it’s for both), and what tips she has for women who want to dive into the world of entertainment.

How did you get involved in TV writing?
I was a playwright in New York. I’d also been writing these recaps of Smash that had a cult following. One of the people who read them was Richard Kramer, who is a TV writer and executive producer. When I moved to LA, he introduced me to people like Margaret Nagle who created Red Band Society. She took me to lunch one day and asked, “Are you interested in stacking [working on several projects]?” I had my agent submit my sample, and I got the job at Red Band. Unfortunately, that show didn’t last, but once you’re in, you start to get traction and one job leads to another.

Do you get to choose your projects or is it like, “Hey, I need a job?”
It’s a little bit of both. The staffing process for writers’ rooms is like applying to colleges. You have the ones you’d love to be in, and then you kind of pick each other. I tend to be attracted to stories about women with big female casts that are all about friendships, interpersonal dynamics, and what their characters want to achieve in the world.

So is The Baby-Sitter’s Club for children or for us?
It’s for everyone! I wanted to make a show that adults would love but that kids would also get. I approached the characters the same way I wrote them for GLOW. The circumstances were different, but their emotional complexities, what happened to them, and the way they thought about things weren’t.

Let’s talk about GLOW—it was freakin’ awesome. How did you get in with the creators?
[The creators] Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch are two of my oldest friends. We were in this playgroup at Ars Nova. It’s now a very prestigious program, but at the time, it was just a bunch of my friends writing plays. The first group I was in included me, Liz, Carly, Elizabeth Meriwether, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Beau Willimon, Steven Levenson, Annie Baker, and all these other people who became huge. I was lucky to have been a part of it.

What advice do you have for those who want a dream job like yours?
Even before my time, there was a set path for getting into this industry. You had to move to LA and get a job as an assistant. Now, there are more circuitous ways to get there. My advice is to have a really interesting piece of writing, which does not have to be a TV pilot. It could be a play, screenplay, or even a short story. Then, get representation with a manager or an agent who’s the right fit for you. Writers also need to understand that agents and managers are only as helpful as you let them be. You need to be the one who says, “This is what I want.” You are the most responsible for your career, and that’s scary, but it’s also empowering to have more control than you think you do.