Mercy Watson Was A Character

The World Is Dark, And Light Is Precious. Come Closer, Dear Reader. You Must Trust Me. I Am Telling You A Story.

We Were 15 Minutes Into It And Nothing Was Happening; I Thought, Well, That's Not Going To Work. Then All Of A Sudden Everything Clicked. I Don't Know How Long It Took Us, But I Would Just Show Up At Alison's [mcghee] Office. She Would Type And We'd Just Kick It Back And Forth. Writing Is So Scary For Me, Such A Lonely Endeavor, And It Became A Wonderful Thing To Show Up And Have Somebody Else Go Through It With Me. It Was Actually A Wonderful Experience.

I Was Visiting My Mother In Florida When The September 11, 2001 Attacks Happened. I Was Working On The Tale Of Despereaux At That Point. I Had Already Gone Into Writing It With A Great Deal Of Trepidation And Fear, And Then This God-awful Thing Happens And It Was Really Hard To Even Get Back Home To Minneapolis.

I Remember Wanting To Write A Book With Someone, The Someone Being Kate [dicamillo], And We Decided To Write About Two Friends. We Had No Idea How To Begin This Project - Neither Of Us Had Ever Collaborated With Another Writer - And I'm Pretty Sure That We Began By Giving Our Two Friends A Sock, Just To See What They'd Do With It. And It Went From There.

Life Is Hard. Life Is Beautiful. Life Is Difficult. Life Is Wonderful.