When she was hired by the _Daily News_ in February, 1976 to start her column, Liz was no stranger to the New York celebrity scene; she had already been in the city for 26 years, working mainly as a free-lance writer. "I made a lot of money free-lancing. Even 15 years ago, I never made less than $25,000 a year." Besides writing for virtually every mass market publication in America, she spent five years ghostwriting the Cholly Knickerbocker society column in the old _Journal American_. Her many contacts among the famous, and the resurgence of interest in gossip, also helped persuade _Daily News_ editor Mike O'Neill that the paper could use a gossip column in which the personality of the writer came through. Within weeks of her debut, Liz broke some of the sensational details of Woodward and Bernstein's _The Final Days_, which was about to be excerpted in _Newsweek_. She added the TV and radio broadcasts to her schedule in 1978, and avoids duplicating items whenever possible. Her best sources, says Liz, are other journalists. "Because they know what stories are. I know a lot of very serious and important writers who have a lot of news and gossip and rumors and stuff that they don't have any place to put, so they're apt to give it to me. They have impulses to disseminate news; I think real reporters do feel that way." Liz says that, generally speaking, she prefers writers to all other people. Asked to name some favorites, she bubblingly replies: "Norman Mailer. I just think Norman is a genius. Oh God, I love so many writers. My favorite novel recently was Peter Maas' book, _Made in America_. ... There's Tommy Thompson, who just wrote _Serpentine_. Nora Ephrom, Carl Bernstein are friends of mine. Norman Mailer is a friend of mine. Oh, I could go on forever." An author in her own right, Liz wrote _The Mother Book_ two years ago; it sold approximately 65,000 copies in hardcover and 200,000 in paperback. "It kind of wrote itself," she says modestly of the acclaimed collection of anecdotes about mothers. Someday she would like to try fiction; at present she is working on a book that she describes as "a history and philosophy of gossip and what it is and what it's all about." An Eastsider for half her life, Liz says her neighborhood "has the lowest crime rate of any police district in New York." Most of the restaurants he frequents are on the Upper East Side. They include Le Plaisir, Gian Marino, Szechuan East and Elaine's. For years she saw her therapist at least once a week; now she pays him just occasional visits. "It helped me enormously in writing. I quit having writer's block. I quit putting things off. I quit making myself miserable. I accepted my success, which was hard, because a lot of writers: they don't want to succeed. They don't think they deserve it. It's like people who don't want to be happy.