When I do it [writing] by myself, there's a lot more terror and u... by Kate DiCamillo

When I do it [writing] by myself, there's a lot more terror and uncertainty.

Kate DiCamillo

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Categorized in : Writing Terror Uncertainty

Her sister, Holly McGhee, is an agent, and she's my agent in New York. She's Alison's agent too. Even though Alison lives here in Minneapolis, I met Alison through Holly, when Holly came to Minneapolis to visit Alison.

hollies agents new-york

What I hope is that the book [Bink & Gollie] delights children. What I hope is that they laugh and laugh and laugh, just as we did when we wrote them.

laughing book children

What's my weirdest adventure? Yikes, there've been so very many. Perhaps the pig+vegetable+Taiwanese-army-guys boat ride to the island off the coast of Taiwan qualifies as the weirdest. Or at least the most seasick.

army islands adventure

I love adventurous travel. I also love pancakes, and making pancakes for other people. You would definitely find me in the airy treetop as opposed to below ground.

adventurous pancakes people

I'm not exactly sure how old the girls are [in Bink & Gollie], but I can pretty much guarantee that their parents will never show up. That would mess up the fun. I do, however, very much like Kate's idea of having Tony [Fucile] draw their portraits.

guarantees-that girl fun

For children: I'm writing a picture book about the Big Dipper and a novel about a cricket, a firefly and a vole. For grownups: I'm writing poems.

writing book children

We [me and Alison McGhee] probably wouldn't have said that when we were writing the stories, but it is so apparent to me in the finished product. For me, looking at Bink, it's like looking at myself on the page in a way that I've never experienced with any other book that I've written.

stories writing book

While we were working, we were writing about a tall girl and a short girl, which we thought was funny, because Alison's [McGhee] tall and I'm short.

tall girl writing

So, yes, at least from my end. You could say there's a lot of Ali... by Kate DiCamillo

So, yes, at least from my end. You could say there's a lot of Alison [McGhee] in Gollie too.

I would hesitate to say the characters [ in Bink & Gollie] are too related to either to us [me and Alison McGhee], but they certainly draw on our physical traits and personality traits and then exaggerate them to the nth degree.

degrees personality character

In The Tale of Despereaux, there is a lot of darkness, a lot of despair. There's also a lot of light, redemption, hope. There's forgiveness, there's friendship, there's love. But the world in all of its potential craziness is also there.

despair light darkness

The Tale of Despereaux is the story of an unlikely hero, a mouse, who falls in love with a princess and then must save her. It's a triumph of the human spirit, via a mouse.

princess falling-in-love hero

Miracles and magic pervade the things that I've written, but yet there are no miracles and there is no magic.

magic written miracle

It's a weird kind of disconnect that this whole story [he Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane] grew around a real doll of mine, and here he is, with his "Edward" expression on his face. It's kind of reality bumping into fantasy.

real journey expression

Rob Horton, the main character of The Tiger Rising, was a secondary character in an adult short story I wrote, and he wouldn't go away after I'd finished the short story. I couldn't figure out what he wanted, so I wrote to find out.

going-away adults character

The Tale of Despereaux came at the request of Luke, my friend's then-eight-year-old son, who asked, "Write for me the story of an unlikely hero with exceptionally large ears."

hero writing son

If memory serves me correctly, and it doesn't always, Kate [DiCamillo] and I met in the fall of 2001 at the former Figlio's restaurant in Minneapolis. We were laughing within a minute of meeting - always a good sign.

laughing memories fall

The themes in my books, like in life, are about grace and redemption and you never know when they're going to show up and what form they're going to be in. Stories emerge from keeping your heart open to the people that cross in front of you or the dogs or the mice, and their ability to open you up and enrich your life.

I'm continually astonished with myself how different people bring out things in me that I never knew I had inside me. Each new friendship can make you a new person, because it opens up new doors inside of you.

new-friendship doors people

I didn't know at the time I was writing Because of Winn-Dixie where the story came from, but in retrospect I can see that it was a response to a terribly harsh winter here in Minnesota.

dixie writing winter