Kate DiCamillo

First Draft Episode #235: Kate DiCamillo

FEBRUARY 24, 2020

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE

Kate DiCamillo is one of six people to win two Newbery Medals, for her novels The Tale of Despereaux and Flora & Ulysses, and author of Newberry Honor book Because of Winn-Dixie, National Book Award finalist The Tiger Rising, as well as New York Times bestselling novels The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, The Magician’s Elephant, the Mercy Watson series, and more. DiCamillo was the U.S. National Ambassador for Young People's Literature for 2014 and 2015. Her most recent novel, Beverly, Right Here completes the trilogy of Raymie Nightingale and Louisiana’s Way Home.

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Sarah Enni: Today's episode of First Draft is brought to you by Alice By Heart, a debut young adult novel from Tony Award winning playwright. Steven Sater. In this book, Sater co-creator of runaway Broadway hit Spring Awakening, tells the story of a young girl who takes refuge in a London tube station during World War II and confronts grief, loss, and first love with the help of her favorite book, Alice in Wonderland.

Sater penned the Lewis Carroll inspired musical alongside his Spring Awakening co-writer, Duncan Sheik and Jessie Nelson. And in the novel, he encourages us all to celebrate the transformational power of the imagination, even in the harshest of times. Alice By Heart is out from Penguin Random House now.

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Sarah Enni: Welcome to First Draft with me, Sarah Enni. This week I'm talking to Kate DiCamillo, one of only six people ever to win two Newbery Medals for her novels The Tale of Despereaux, and Flora and Ulysses. And author of Newbury Honor book Because of Winn-Dixie, National Book Award finalist, The Tiger Rising, as well as New York Times bestselling books, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, The Magician's Elephant, and the Mercy Watson series, and more.

Kate was also the U.S. National Ambassador for Young People's Literature in 2014 and 2015. Her most recent novel, Beverly Right Here, completes the trilogy of Ramyie Nightingale and Louisiana's Way Home. I loved what Kate had to say about her 'quote unquote' lost years, the epiphany of two pages a day. The realities of winning a major literary award on your life and your art, and she gives tons of writing advice that adults need to hear.

Everything that Kate and I talk about in today's episode can be found in the show notes, links to download, watch, read, all of the many authors and TV shows and movies that came up. First Draft participates in affiliate programs and shopping through the links on the show notes @FirstDraftpod.com helps to support the show at no cost to you. If you'd to donate to First Draft on either a onetime or a monthly basis, simply go to paypal.me/firstdraftpod.

Another quick and easy way to support the show is to subscribe to the podcast wherever you're listening right now, and if you have two minutes, leave a rating or review on iTunes. I've set a pretty big goal of reaching 300 ratings on iTunes by the end of the month. There's only five days left, so click on over to iTunes right this very minute. It doesn't take very long.

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Leaving a rating and review on iTunes only takes a second, but through the magic of some kind of mysterious algorithm, it boosts the show and gets it in front of new listeners, and if I reach 300 ratings by March 1st I will host a massive giveaway with tons of books from guests on this show.

Finally, if you have any writing or creativity questions that you'd like me and a future guest to answer in an upcoming mailbag episode, please call and leave that question at First Draft's voicemail. That's at (818) 533-1998. Okay, now please sit back, relax, and enjoy my conversation with Kate DiCamillo.

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Sarah Enni: Hi Kate. How are you?

Kate DiCamillo: Hi Sarah. I'm well.

Sarah Enni: I to start my interviews at the very beginning, which is, where were you born and raised?

Kate DiCamillo: I was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and when I was five years old we moved to a small town in central Florida called Claremont. So that's where I grew up.

Sarah Enni: Okay. And how was reading and writing a part of growing up for you?

Kate DiCamillo: Oh, in so many different ways. And it's funny because I wish that I had been able to articulate this to my mother properly when she was alive, how clearly she saw me as somebody who needed books, and she was the person who got them in my hands, in a variety of ways. So I grew up in a family that believed in books. There were books in the house. She bought me books. She took me to the library twice a week. She read to me.

And I remember when I was eight-years-old, I became obsessed with Abraham Lincoln. And so this is in the days before you could go online and find all the books about Abraham Lincoln at the level for an eight-year-old. So she went and special ordered, from the next town over, several books. So she just paid attention to what I was reading and facilitated all the time. So she was super central to my reading and writing life.

And also growing up in a small town in the South really contributed to having a kind of a storytelling mindset, I think.

Sarah Enni: Yeah, that's kind of a cliche maybe.

Kate DiCamillo: It is. It is. But when I physically think about it, I grew up on a dead end street and one side was all older widow ladies and we were welcome to come over and sit on their porches, play in their backyards. And so it was always this thing of where you would sit and talk with them and story was currency kind of. They had stories, and then I would try to tell them the stories backs.

Sarah Enni: Oh, that's so sweet. Reading was obviously very central for you. What about expressing yourself about creative writing?

Kate DiCamillo: Well, you know, I'm old. So I'm what? I'm almost 56. I'll say to kids when I go in and talk to a class, how many of you have met a writer before? Almost all of them have. That was not happening when I was growing up.

Sarah Enni: Almost all of them have met a writer before?

Kate DiCamillo: Yeah, they have.

Sarah Enni: Wow.

Kate DiCamillo: And so it was this thing where books were these magical, magical things. And I just didn't think that human beings had anything to do with it. And if we wrote in school, it was an essay, you learned how to write an essay. And so it wasn't until college that I got the idea in my head that I wanted to write. But I never had it in there as a kid.

Sarah Enni: Wow. So you never thought about writing, but were you doing any... sometimes people will write but don't think about it as a career. Were you writing at all? Or, no.

Kate DiCamillo: I wasn't. I wrote some really bad poetry to the dog. Which seems kind of foreshadowing in a way.

Sarah Enni: [Laughing] You wrote poetry to your dog! It does.

Kate DiCamillo: Yeah, no I didn't, I didn't. And then even when I went away to college and here I am, I'm a huge reader, so what am I gonna major in? Okay, I'll major in English and then I can just read all the time. And the adults would say, "What are you gonna do with an English degree?" And it's like, "I don't know." You know? And then it was a professor who said to me these words that I say to the kids all the time, cause they're burned on my brain, "You have a certain facility with words you should consider graduate school."

And so I thought he was trying to tell me I was really talented. And of course that isn't what he was trying to tell me, but I just latched onto that and I thought, "Okay, I'm gonna be a writer." And then I spent a long time with that pie-in-the sky idea and no, I still wasn't writing.

Sarah Enni: What do you think he really trying to tell you?

Kate DiCamillo: I think that I had a certain facility with words [laughing], and that I would have done okay in graduate school. You know? But at that age you think that somebody is telling you that you're special. And what I've found, and you probably know this too. I've sat in so many writing groups, and I can tell you the people to the left of me and to the right of me who are much more talented than I am. Talent doesn't really factor in that much. What factors in is, "Are you gonna be persistent? Are you able to compromise, rewrite, make changes, and keep on going when the door keeps on getting slammed?"

Those things matter more than the talent or the certain facility with words, right?

Sarah Enni: Yeah. And I don't think it can be said enough.

Kate DiCamillo: Right! Because people, well I talk a lot to adults too, but when I talk to kids, people always think kids need to hear this. Adults need to hear it. Because people just think, "Oh, it's something I'm supposed to do. I'll sit down and it will come out. Right?" No, it won't.

Sarah Enni: [Both laughing] No. Were that that was the way. I don't want to leave childhood quite yet. And I'm gonna ask about a couple of things because they relate to your work. But I understand that you were sick a lot as a kid.

Kate DiCamillo: Yeah. And it's almost a cliche that sick person goes on to become a writer. Because I think it's that thing where you spend a lot of time alone. My mom worked, she was a teacher and she was a single parent, and so the neighbor ladies would come in and check on me. But I was home a lot by myself during the school day. No TV until fourth grade. And so I read.

And you kind of live in your head and sometimes kids will come up to me after I give the PowerPoint about how I became a writer and say, "These terrible things happened, but then you wouldn't be a writer." And I say, "I think that's probably true.These things that seem hard are actually a gift."

Sarah Enni: That's fascinating. Do you think now about the well of worlds that you were, in some ways, you were kind of doing homework for your life now.

Kate DiCamillo: Right. And you know, even more than the being alone, it's the reading. And when people say, "Do you have any advice for young writers?" I have advice for young writers and old writers and middle aged writers, which is, "Read. That's it." Because that's how you teach yourself how to do it. You absorb the narrative arc without even really being aware that you're doing it.

So all that reading. And I was first and foremost as a kid, that was how I defined myself, as a reader. It's how I define myself now. Writer comes second. I'm a reader.

Sarah Enni: And does telling those stories on porches and stuff like that... I talk a lot about the difference between writing and storytelling, because I think they are pretty distinct. How do you think about storytelling and how it still factors into your life?

Kate DiCamillo: That's interesting because [pauses] and this might seem like a squishy point. But for me, and we're leaping way ahead to process I know, but it's just plugging into the storyteller's voice is how I am able to write the book. And each book has its own voice that I have to find. So even though it's a book, and it's different than the oral storytelling, it's very much related because you find that voice that belongs to the story.

Sarah Enni: I've had the great fortune to talk to people, in the last month or so, who did not magically immediately publish books and become rock stars. Basically people who have spent, what I've been calling 'lost periods of time'.

Kate DiCamillo: Ha! I'm your person.

Sarah Enni: I would love to hear about that. Post-college, how did you find your way to your calling?

Kate DiCamillo: It's funny because, I'll talk about that period, and then a question that somebody asked me once, which I think about quite a bit. So, "You should consider you've a certain facility with words, you should consider graduate school." And then, me getting my bachelor's degree and thinking, "Okay, now I'm gonna be a writer." And reading books on writing. And of course, reading all the time. And telling everybody I was a writer. And wearing a black turtle neck, which is always embarrassing to say, but I say it because it gives you an idea of just how ridiculous I was. And then I worked a lot of small jobs because I was a writer, right?

But through all of that, I really genuinely am not writing, because where do you start? Right? You've got this big dream and you've told everybody this is what you're gonna do. And it's like, "How are you gonna write a novel? You don't even know where to start."

Sarah Enni: And when you're wearing a black turtleneck and calling yourself a writer, is that what you're thinking in your head? Novels, explicitly for adults?

Kate DiCamillo: I'm not sure. Or, eventually I switched horses to short stories, right? Because you have that mistaken notion that they're short, therefore they're easier. And it's, of course, incredibly wrong. They're much more difficult. So I made it to 29, occasionally I would try something and then it would always be terrifying. And so I would put it away. And so at the time, and you can assure your listeners of this, I'm the least athletic person in the world. But I was running, and I would run two miles every day.

Did I say to everybody, "I want to be a runner?" No. It was just easy to do. And I did it. And eventually I thought, "I do this thing every day. I've committed to doing this thing every day that doesn't matter to me at all. What if I take that and do two pages to this thing that I say that really matters to me?" So that's kinda how I coaxed myself into it.

And two pages a day, is a novel if you really commit to it. And it's not as scary. So I sat down and started doing two pages.

Sarah Enni: What were those first two pages?

Kate DiCamillo: Oh, terrible. Terrible. And I don't know, Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, I hadn't read that book. I didn't know that they were supposed to be terrible in the beginning. But I still had that two-miles-a-day running, and thinking, "I just will sit down and do it." And eventually, I figured out something that I've since hung my hat on, which is that, it's terrible. And then you go back and you do another draft and it gets marginally better. And then you come back and you do another draft and it gets better still.

And then after a while it actually resembles something that is readable. And then you can send it out. And as I like to say to the kids, "And what do you get back?" And they always say, "Money." [Chuckles] It's like, "No. What you get is a rejection letter." So I started. And I started sending the stories out to literary magazines and I started collecting the rejection letters and there were a couple of rejection letters that were like, you could live off the fumes of a personal rejection letter.

This all happened back in the day where I was literally dropping it in the mailbox and then the mail would come back to me and here was a handwritten note from somebody at the New Yorker, or somebody at the Atlantic saying, "You know, try us again." And that was enough. That was enough to keep me going.

Sarah Enni: And at that point you were writing short stories?

Kate DiCamillo: Correct.

Sarah Enni: We skipped a little bit, which is the jobs that you had in your twenties.

Kate DiCamillo: Sure. Um, let's see. I worked at Circus World as a ticket seller. I worked at Disney World for a long time, on and off. I kept on going back to Disney Epcot Center, Spaceship Earth, blue polyester space suit. I worked in a greenhouse for a long time growing variegated philodendrons. Anything that I thought would leave my mind free for this writing that I wasn't doing.

And then when I moved to Minneapolis, it was serendipity in a way, because I got a job in a book warehouse, and I loved it. I was surrounded by people who loved to write. They were all readers, but they were also actors, writers and all that. And I was assigned to the third floor of the warehouse, which is where all the children's books were.

Sarah Enni: That's very serendipitous.

Kate DiCamillo: Yeah. So when I arrived there, I'd been sending stories out for a bit and I had no intention of writing children's books. But I started to read the books that I was picking off the shelf, and I fell in love.

Sarah Enni: Do you remember what some of the early ones where?

Kate DiCamillo: Oh sure. The Watsons go to Birmingham 1963, Christopher Paul Curtis (author of Newbery Medal book Bud, Not Buddy, and Elijah of Buxton). Katherine Paterson Bridge to Terabithia (and Jacob Have I Loved, as well as Newbery Honor book The Great Gilly Hopkins). Karen Hesse (author of Newbery Medal book Out of the Dust) . And you know, because I was such a huge reader when I was a kid, and this is the thing about kid's books, is they hang around. So a lot of the things that I read as a kid were still being picked in that warehouse. But there were a lot of new things too. I and I just read my way through the third floor.

Sarah Enni: That's amazing. I'm interested in what the timeline is as far as reading voraciously and then deciding to actually commit your two words a day to children's lit.

Kate DiCamillo: I was almost thirty when I started to write, so twenty-nine and some change. And then I thought, "Okay." It almost coincided with the move to Minneapolis. When I was riding in from the airport today, the guy was like, "Wow, Minneapolis and how'd you end up there?"

And Minneapolis from Central Florida was this kind of like Hail Mary. It's just like, "Something has got to change." It was kind of a way to become somebody different. Become a writer maybe.

Sarah Enni: Yeah. You had to shake yourself loose.

Kate DiCamillo: Right. And I did. Boy it will wake you up when it's ten degrees.

Sarah Enni: Yeah [chuckles], I read that you moved to Minneapolis without a winter coat.

Kate DiCamillo: It's true. I say that and I've said it so much, but it's true. I thought, "How cold can it be? It gets cold in Florida and you just run from one building to the other." You know? And so I was not prepared in any way.

Sarah Enni: I just am interested in how you look back on that decade.

Kate DiCamillo: Right. And I'm glad that you said that because it made me think of the point that I was like, "Ooh, let me save that because I don't say it very often." Somebody said to me once, "Don't you regret all that wasted time?" And not one bit. Because when I talk about, "Okay, you send the story out and what do you get back money. Ha ha ha. You get back rejection letters." And then I make the kids guess how many rejection letters I got.

And usually, maybe, they'll go up to 50. And then I put the number up on the screen and it's 473. And they're like, "Oh no!" And that's what all those years gave me. By the time I sat down and started, I realized it was on nobody but me. And nobody was gonna give me anything. And if I wanted to do it, I was gonna have to be relentless.

So that's what that time gave me and it also gave me time to be in the world and see people. You know? And all those people that passed by me at Circus World and Disney World, the people that I met working in the greenhouse, it was an education in life.

Sarah Enni: Yeah. Well yeah, you have to have something to pull from.

Kate DiCamillo: Right.

Sarah Enni: Because being a writer is a lot of time, not in the world, actually.

Kate DiCamillo: Right. Right. And also there's that old trope about 'write what you know.' You don't know anything. So you have to imagine your way into other... and that act of empathy is from being around people, you know? I think.

Sarah Enni: Yeah, I agree. So I am interested in that you started with short stories, and then you kind of felt the pull to kid lit. And you started with then, novels also.

Kate DiCamillo: Right. Well, what I did was I took a copy of The Watsons Go to Birmingham 1963, and I took it home and I typed up a chapter. It's like, "Okay, how long is a chapter in this universe? And then how long would a novel be?" So it was kinda like getting my toes wet. And pretty soon after I did that, I got not the first line of Winn-Dixie, but the voice of it arrived. And everything that I had learned in doing short stories, that smaller narrative arc, I then transferred to the smaller narrative arc of a chapter and a kid's novel.

Sarah Enni: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And Winn Dixie has many interrelated stories, and characters, so that makes sense. Before we talk more specifically about Winn-Dixie, do you mind pitching that book for us?

Kate DiCamillo: Ha! So what, I'm supposed to do an elevator pitch?

Sarah Enni: [Laughs] Yeah, I know.

Kate DiCamillo: I always think I'm the last person to do a book talk. I've heard librarians and booksellers do a really good job here and I can't do it. But a girl walks into a grocery store and there's a dog in the produce section wrecking havoc, wreaking havoc. And the dog needs the girl and the girl needs the dog. And the writer needs the girl and the dog.

Sarah Enni: Yeah. I love that. Can you kind of talk me through, you're kind of cutting your teeth on writing a novel for the first time with this book. What was the rejection continuing? What was the process and the timeline?

Kate DiCamillo: So at the risk of sounding like The Shining, I heard the voice. I started. It was fun. You don't worry that anything's gonna come of it or whether you're doing it right or wrong. I had a really good time and it went relatively quickly when I look back on it. And so eventually I see that it's okay. It's actually a book. But in the meantime, what had happened was that I had tried a picture book first.

And in the Bookman, this book warehouse where I worked, publisher's reps would come in and shop for books. And a Candlewick sales rep came in. And I'd never, ever, ever asked anybody for anything. I'm the kind of kid who would save all year so I could buy my own girl scout cookies when they came in because I hated going door to door and saying, "You don't want to buy any girl scout cookies do you?"

And so for one of the few times in my life, I said, "I love everything Candlewick does. And I'm a writer and I can't get in the door because I don't have an agent, and I've never been published." She said, "If you get me a story, I'll get it to an editor." And so that was a picture book. And the editor wrote me back and had me rewrite, and had me rewrite again. And had me rewrite again. And then said these terrible words, "I still don't think it's working."

And I thought at this point, "What could be worse? To be good enough to have gotten to this point, and not good enough to make it the rest of the way?" And I said to her, "Well, I've been working on a novel. Can I send that to you when I'm done?" And she said, "Sure."

So I finished Winn-Dixie and I sent it to her. And then there was a lot of like, somebody was on maternity leave. It ended up in a box. And all the boxes, came back to the office, boxes and boxes of manuscripts from an editorial assistant named Kara LaReau, who happened to get the box with Winn Dixie in it.

She read it. This is like, I don't know, six months after I'd sent it. And they called.

Sarah Enni: I love that story.

Kate DiCamillo: It's like, "What are the chances?" Right?

Sarah Enni: Yeah. I read a little bit about this story, but that they gave her the go ahead to purchase, and she was an editorial assistant so she hadn't, as an editor, bought a book before. So this was her first book as well.

Kate DiCamillo: Right. And she's a fantastic editor. And then came the next fear, which was, "Oh no, I have to rewrite for somebody and I don't know if I can do it or not." Which shows up every time. But it was particularly like, "Oh no, now everything rests on this." And I was able to do it.

And also when we're sitting there talking about what you need, talent being the least of it, you do need luck. That box, that manuscript, Kara, without that it might've been a different [ending]. It had gone out to other publishers in the meantime, because it had kind of gotten lost at Candlewick. And there was interest and there were things that were said like, "Oh, we would consider it if you got rid of all the strange people in it."

And it's like, "Well then it's gonna disappear because it's a book of strange people." So all of that was kind of happening in the background. But if Kara hadn't gotten it, and if Candlewick hadn't gotten it, it would be a very different thing.

Sarah Enni: Yeah. And just as a quick aside, you in Minneapolis at this time, kind of going through the ringer with Candlewick trying to get this thing to happen. Did you have other writers in your life or other people who were...?

Kate DiCamillo: I went to a writing group. I had two different writing groups that I went to. I had found community in a lot of different ways. But some of those people, and again, it goes back to that luck thing. And it's just like, "How, long do you keep on going before you give up?"

And it actually was a lot of rejection letters, most of them for short stories, but it was probably all told maybe six years. And that's not that long, you know? It's just, I got lucky.

Sarah Enni: Yeah, my book came out ten years after I started writing seriously, which felt very kind of kismety. And yeah, that's a pretty good amount of time, you know?

Kate DiCamillo: See, and I remember getting poets and writers and you would see the little ads for somebody who had published their book and they were advertising it. And you think, "Oh my! Once you make it, you still don't make it". You know? And I remember reading a wonderful article in there about how we never expect somebody to go off and be a brain surgeon.

Right? You have to have an apprenticeship. So it might be six years, it might be ten years where you're teaching yourself how to do it. But then something has to click in in the luck department too, right?

Sarah Enni: Yeah, it's true. It's really true. But you have to be ready to meet that when it happens.

Kate DiCamillo: Right, you do. And that's the thing about like, "Okay!" You have to be able to rewrite. You have to be able to be like, "Okay, I get that point. I don't like it, but I see what you're talking about. I can do it." You know, that kinda thing?

Sarah Enni: I love that. And the reason that I'm harping on it is cause I don't think we can say it enough. And I'm actively, to whatever extent I can work against the young ingenue, best-selling, overnight storyline.

Kate DiCamillo: And also it doesn't [sighs] I was gonna say, it's not the best way to start. And everybody thinks it's the best way to start. And it's not because you don't know who you are yet. And once you've put in that long apprenticeship and dealt with the rejection and dealt with the close, "Oh, I'm almost there." It's just you have a better sense of who you are. If you hit it right out of the gate, you don't necessarily know who you are. Do you agree with that?

Sarah Enni: Yes. And I have friends that have had that career trajectory and it is really difficult for them.

Kate DiCamillo: Yeah. I think it would be hard.

Sarah Enni: You kind of have to be a particularly grounded kind of person to get through that. To keep your feet on the ground.

Kate DiCamillo: Right. It would knock you. It would! And then you've got a whole bunch of different voices in your head that you have to answer to. Where you're answering during that ten years, or that six years, to the fear of rejection and all of that. But that's different than everybody's expectations for the next book.

Sarah Enni: Well, speaking of expectations, I want to talk about the Newbery Honor. Because of Winn-Dixie earned you the Newbery Honor. Congrats.

Kate DiCamillo: Oh, thank you.

Sarah Enni: The first of many awards, which we'll get to. But that is always so wild when a debut novel gets recognized in that way and then also went on to be a bestseller. And I'm curious about how that was for you.

Kate DiCamillo: How old was I by that point? I can't do the math. Oh yes I can. Yes I can, because it's the 20 year anniversary coming up. So I would have been 36 and I had been knocked around quite a bit by then. Also I had worked in that book warehouse and I had such realistic expectations for what would happen with a first time, middle-grade novel.

And they were, if I was really lucky, 5,000 copies would sell, and they wouldn't be remaindered where I was working. You know, I wouldn't have to see them. That would be the pie-in -he sky. Then I would earn out the advance. So that's what I had in my head as that's success, then I can do another one. Right?

And so when all of this happened, I was still back there thinking, I mean... I knew what an aberration it was what had happened to me. And I knew that my job was still what I thought it was like, "Okay, then let me do another one."

I remember when Winn Dixie got turned into a movie and one of the producers, I said to him, right before the movie opened, I said, "What do we hope for?" And he said, "What we always hope for, which is that it does well enough that I get to make another movie." And that's the thing with the books. You just want to do well enough to write another book.

I had a great group, still do, of friends. I was working full time in a bookstore. I remember doing interviews the morning that the Newbery Honor was announced and one of the newspaper reporters said, "Are you gonna quit your job? Are you gonna buy a house?" I was in a 300 square foot apartment. I'm like, "No, no." And within a year I had done both of those things.

Sarah Enni: Oh, interesting. That was gonna be my next question was whether or not that gave you the opportunity to write full time?

Kate DiCamillo: Yeah, it did. But it was also kind of a slow build because even though the book did really well, I also made my living going around and doing the school visits. And that was fantastic. What I would make was $250. That's what I made, basically, in a week at the bookstore and it was like, "You're kidding me. You're gonna pay me $250 to come in and talk about my book?

So that was kind of what paid the bills for awhile.

Sarah Enni: That makes sense. And that's kind of a rich world for middle-grade writers in particular. The school visits.

Kate DiCamillo: Yes. Yes. You really do make a living doing that. And it's spectacular.

Sarah Enni: Which is good. And I like to point that kind of stuff out cause that's not obvious on the surface.

Kate DiCamillo: Right, people don't know it.

Sarah Enni: Yeah. So I wanted to ask about expectations based on that. And also, I'm interested in how, or if, two pages a day had changed by this point. That's a whole different circumstances to have to write under.

Kate DiCamillo: Right. And the two pages a day was always like, "I can get that done, go to work, and know all day long that the real work has already been done." But it's also a really good way to jolly yourself through the fear. And also, after I'm making my living as a writer, I drove all over Minnesota doing school visits. So I was still doing two pages a day.

I still do two pages a day when I start out on the very first draft. And now it's changed in that when I do the second draft and move to double spacing and more coherence, then it's three pages in two different sessions. And then four pages if it's going well in the third draft.

And so that has changed a little bit. But to jolly myself along in the beginning, it's just two pages. You can get up as soon as you're done. Cause it's so terrifying.

Sarah Enni: And still first thing in the morning for you.

Kate DiCamillo: Yup. Absolutely. The magic time I think.

Sarah Enni: So, first of all, Because of Winn Dixie, when you did sell that to Candlewick, was it a one book deal?

Kate DiCamillo: It was. And in the meantime I was finishing up Tiger Rising. And I finished it, I'm trying to think which apartment I was in. I finished rewriting Winn Dixie prior to doing the rewrites on Tiger Rising. And then I was agentless. I had a literary agent who did both of those deals for me. I remember standing in The Bookman on the phone when she said she wanted to ask for this, this, and this.

And I'm like, "Don't ask for anything." I was so afraid that the whole thing would... and she's like, "I'm just gonna ask for this. And this is what you do. You don't just sign the boilerplate." And it's like [raises her voice high] "Let's sign the boilerplate!" And then after Tiger, I signed with Holly McGhee at Pippin Properties.

Sarah Enni: So the first agent who was helping you was kind of like a... per contract...?

Kate DiCamillo: She was literally a lawyer who knew how to look at a publishing contract.

Sarah Enni: Wow. Wow. That's wild. That's so interesting. And what, if any, pressure did you feel after Winn Dixie took off? It sounds like you already had Tiger Rising.

Kate DiCamillo: I already had Tiger Rising, which was a huge thing psychologically because that was done. So the pressure didn't really show up until, well, so then I signed with Holly and we made a deal for an unnamed manuscript. Cause that's what you do cause you don't know. It's like, "Here you are, this could be the top."

And I'll never do that again. Because there was the contract and the book wasn't even a glimmer in my eye. Then I really was like, "Here's Winn Dixie and people love it." The Newbery Honor was overwhelming. But there was also just this thing of, I read this to my mother in the hospital. And the kids, I've read this to them in the class. And it was just like, "I have to do another book like this."

And so that was the big struggle was like, "Okay, I'm gonna do another book like Winn Dixie. I'm gonna do it." And I found out like, "Wow, I'm not gonna survive if I try to write to make people love me. So I'm gonna have to go on a completely different direction." And that was Despereaux. Mouse, castle, everything, like, "What are the chances that I'm gonna be able to do this?"

And it's funny because a couple of times people will bring this up, if they know the industry well enough. And I was in New York last year and somebody asked this at an event which is, "What if it hadn't been Candlewick? What if you'd gone to a bigger house? And they had then said, 'How about Winn Dixie 2?'"

And because I couldn't believe that it had happened, and because I'm a pleaser, I would have done it. Even though it would have been forced. So it would have been a totally different trajectory. I was really lucky in that Candlewick never ever said that. My agent never said it. And when I sent a few pages of Despereaux to Kara, she said, "More please." And when I sent a few pages of it to Holly, she's like, "Go right ahead." No one ever said, "Don't. Don't do that." And just, "Where's the rest?"

Sarah Enni: That's great. And that is very astute of that person to bring up the benefits of a less [known publisher]. There's Big Five and then there's a ton of other amazing publishers.

Kate DiCamillo: Right! People think, "Oh, you have to be with big house, or else." And it would have been a totally different career if it hadn't been Candlewick.

Sarah Enni: And Candlewick is so incredible. I mean, you helped build what it is today, but that's fantastic.

Kate DiCamillo: I think that's arguable. They were very much known for picture books. So that was the other thing I got is like, "You're doing a novel? At Candlewick?" And then the look like, "Ugh!" But it was just perfect.

Sarah Enni: Yeah. I love that. So what we're skipping over is that Tiger Rising, your second book, was the National Book Award finalist. So that was also no slouch. And I'm not trying to embarrass you or make this an uncomfortable situation, but this is a remarkable start to your career. And it's great that you sort of knew that, and knew to brace yourself a little bit. Cause that comes with positives and negatives.

Kate DiCamillo: Right. It does. Because sometimes people will say, "Where are the Newbery's?" Which we haven't gotten to yet. Cause you get the actual Newbery. And it's like "They're in a desk drawer." They're not up on the wall. And very, very occasionally I will pull back the desk drawer, look at them, and then slam the door. You cannot think about any of that when it's failure and I'm gonna never be able to do this and no one's ever gonna publish me. That's one thing. But it's another thing entirely when what you write, you know people are gonna read, and they might hate.

Sarah Enni: Right. Or, when their expectations, if someone coming to read Because of Winn Dixie, especially maybe even before it was awarded anything, the expectations are like, "Who even knows?"

Kate DiCamillo: Right. There's a dog on the cover and that's great.

Sarah Enni: Then they're so happy and excited and then it builds and builds, but then the next time around people come in expecting it to blow their socks off.

Kate DiCamillo: Right! Boy, you're really cheering me up! [Laughs]!

Sarah Enni: I know, I'm so sorry! But because you have persisted and continued writing really wonderful stuff, that's why I'm like, "How'd she get through it?"

Kate DiCamillo: How did I get through it? I mean, I don't get asked that question a lot. And it's not like I have a lot of easy answers for stuff, but I don't really sit and think about that. Maybe because it scares me some? But it's always that thing of that none of that is my business. Even though it's my business. What I have to do is try to tell the story as well and truthfully as I can. And the rest of it is so out of my control other than showing up and doing the work. And in the beginning being relentless about putting the work out.

But then it changes to showing up, doing the work, being as truthful as I can with telling the story. And then I don't have to send it to twenty places and collect twenty rejection letters, but I do have to trust myself to know that it's something that is ready for somebody to read.

Sarah Enni: Yes. Right. I'm trying to put myself in that place and to think. You also want to continue to be challenged. And I'm not suggesting that anyone in your life was like this, but a 'yes man' problem, right?

Kate DiCamillo: Yeah, I didn't have any 'yes, man.'

Sarah Enni: That's good [laughing].

Kate DiCamillo: At the same time that my agent and Candlewick are both saying, "Go in whatever direction that you want." I also have Holly, the agent, a couple of times I'll send her something and, "Why don't we just put this in a drawer for awhile?" And so I absolutely trust her. And one of these situations, it got to the point where she said, "I can sell this if you want me to. And I don't think that's what you should do. But if you want me to sell it, I can sell it." And so it's just like, "Okay, there's somebody who's got my back and is looking for the best thing."

Sarah Enni: I think writers, to make a broad generalization, are kind of a striving type of people. There's a lot of a desperation that goes with wanting a story to be out there, wanting to craft something, this kind of almost obsession. That's sort of baked in to the type.

Kate DiCamillo: Yeah. No, I totally agree.

Sarah Enni: And then when it comes with something that could be seen as a career pinnacle, there's maybe some pressure taken out off, that actually might've been necessary. Am I communicating this?

Kate DiCamillo: Yeah, I get what you're saying.

Sarah Enni: That would be my concern.

Kate DiCamillo: But there's also this kind of like, I have been given this chance. Now I can go in any direction I want to. So the hurdles are in me. It's what I want to try to do as a writer. And so it's that, and it's like, "Okay, now there's no reason not to try that." And that's a real gift, if you can get out of the way of the fear of it, you know?

Sarah Enni: Yeah. There's a podcast called Blank Check that's all about young filmmakers who had this massive successful movie, oftentimes unexpectedly, and then a studio says, "Here, make whatever you want. We'll green-light whatever's in your head." And the various levels of success, and not success, that those filmmakers experience when they're given a blank check. And it's a fascinating concept to me.

Kate DiCamillo: Right, right. And that's a good catch all. Yeah, I was given a blank check.

Sarah Enni: Well, literally the contract was 'unnamed book'. Right?

Kate DiCamillo: Right. It was. It was 'unnamed book'.

Sarah Enni: Which is very intimidating.

Kate DiCamillo: It is. Now when I turn it in to Holly, that's the sixth draft, usually? And she'll have seen it in bits and pieces before that. And then, I don't want the contract any point before that.

Sarah Enni: That's interesting. I've been hearing that from a lot of people lately. That writing on spec, just writing the entire thing, for some people not for everybody, but it's psychologically good for a lot of people.

Kate DiCamillo: Right. Although there are people who want a spur to their sides. I'm not one of them. I've got my own spurs.

Sarah Enni: So let's talk about Tale of Despereaux. Do you mind pitching that book for us?

Kate DiCamillo: There's a mouse [both start laughing] who thinks that music sounds like honey. And falls in love with 'once upon a time' and also a princess. And he does very un-mouse-like things. And he ends up rescuing the princess.

Sarah Enni: Yay! The first two books were pretty, realistic is maybe a loose term for it in some ways, but they were realistic and they had animals, but they were more realistic. So the Tale of Despereaux is a little bit of a step into kind of a fairytale.

Kate DiCamillo: Yeah, I would call it a fairytale more than fantasy. But even the fairytale part of it I messed with. I took anachronisms, things that didn't belong in fairytales, just to cheer myself up, you know? There's one point where the King plays, "When the deep purple falls over sleepy garden walls." And that's from the forties. And there's cigarettes in there. So it's just a mishmash of stuff.

Sarah Enni: What was it like, I mean, taking on fairytales is a lot. And it also is, like you're saying, it sort of comes with a set of rules that you can either gladly accept, or you can kind of mess with. How did you think about it?

Kate DiCamillo: Well, I didn't super think about it because then I wouldn't have done what I did. I found that there's an intrusive narrator in that story. And that's an understatement. And once I had that voice, I was like, "Okay. This person, whoever they are, knows what's going on in the story. And so I can just get out of the way and follow this voice." And that voice would toss in stuff to amuse itself. And it's not me, which sounds really weird, but it was that voice, what the New York Times called, "The loudest voice at a cocktail party."

And it was kind of a blustery but comforting [voice]. And I needed that. And it turns out that the reader relies on it too, but I relied on it as a writer.

Sarah Enni: I'm really interested in that because I've read interviews with you where you were like, "It sounds like a character's voice is often the driving force to start a story and to get through it." What's the benefit of having this very kind of convivial, loud, joke making...

Kate DiCamillo: Oh, it's great! Because that voice just jollied me through the whole thing. I never know what's gonna happen in a story. I don't outline. I thought, "This voice will tell me." And that voice did. And so I just relied on that voice.

Sarah Enni: And it ends up being something of a... the Tale of Despereaux goes pretty dark places.

Kate DiCamillo: Yeah, it does.

Sarah Enni: And the narrator sort of is a counterweight to that. And I don't know if you thought about it that way or not.

Kate DiCamillo: No, I didn't. I just knew how much comfort that narrator gave me. And that comfort, from what I hear from kids, it transfers to the reader, and makes the reader feel safe too.

Sarah Enni: Which is another thing in fairytales. There's a lot of scaffolding around the story. You're very explicitly being told a story.

Kate DiCamillo: Right. And that alone makes you feel safe, or it makes me feel safe. "Tell me a story. Okay. I can calm down some."

Sarah Enni: Yeah. Yeah. I like that. I do want to talk about.. and there's many more to get to, but there's a recurring theme of kids who are sort of expected to skip childhood for a lot of reasons. Kids who are sort of abandoned or left to their own devices, or asked to grow up very quickly in your works.

Kate DiCamillo: Is it conscious?

Sarah Enni: Yeah.

Kate DiCamillo: No, but so much of where the stories come from is, I guess, the eight, nine, ten-year-old in me. There's a moment in Ramyie Nightingale when there's an adult character who's asleep and the kids are trying to steal her Baton. But that's a different story entirely. And Ramyie thinks how terrifying it is to see an adult sleeping because who's in charge of the world.

But you also have that awareness as an eight, nine, ten-year-old that maybe the adults don't know what they're doing. And that's terrifying too. And I think that that realization hovers at the edge of a lot of the stories that I tell.

Sarah Enni: And I don't want to speak out of turn, but I know that your personal life features...

Kate DiCamillo: Oh sure. Yeah. Yeah. And it's funny cause right before I came here to LA, I was working on an essay, which is not something I do very often. About growing up in a single parent home, but with a father that came and went and the terrifying way it makes you feel as a kid. That uncertainty.

Sarah Enni: And forgive me, we don't have to talk about this if you don't want to.

Kate DiCamillo: No, I'm happy to talk about whatever. It's right here on the tip of my tongue after doing all of that. So you got me at a good time.

Sarah Enni: Well, I read a few interviews with you, where you kind of got into it and talked about moving to Florida because you were so ill, on doctor's recommendations to feel better, moving down to Florida. And your dad was like, "I'm gonna come join you guys." And then it sort of never happened.

Kate DiCamillo: Right.

Sarah Enni: But you talked about you and your mom and your brother all sort of living in an imaginary world together where it was just going to happen any day now.

Kate DiCamillo: Right. Well that's true. It was a fantasy. I remember sitting on the back step and the neighbor, Idabell Collins, was like, "Now when is your father coming?" And I thought, "I'll give her the line, but I know it's a line." And so that gets back to that thing of how much we underestimate kids. And Katherine Paterson's quote about you're duty bound to end with hope when you write for kids (Paterson’s 1988 essay, “Hope is More Than Happiness.” New York Times).

But that doesn't mean that you don't tell the truth along the way. Because it's hugely comforting to have somebody tell you the truth when you're five, six-years-old. And you know for a fact, "Naw, he's not coming, but I'm gonna pretend." And fairytales give you a lot of that. But you need that reassurance that what you're seeing is not... You buy into the fantasy for the adults to protect them.

And so you need the story that tells the truth. And you know, Charlotte's Web does that, and it kills you. But it's also that thing of, you tell the truth and you make the truth bearable.

Sarah Enni: Yeah. I was just reading a book that discussed a theory of parenting, I guess. The book is called How to Talk So Kids Will Listen, And How to Listen So Kids Will Talk. It's the first time I've wanted to read a parenting book. I don't have kids.

Kate DiCamillo: I was gonna say, "Do you have kids?"

Sarah Enni: I don't. But this was fascinating because I guess the theory of it, and I hope I'm getting this right, is basically if a kid is upset, you kind of pause and say, "You're upset because you wanted to wear these red shoes but you have to wear your snow boots today." It's literally just saying you are upset and I understand why. And then nine times out of ten they're like, "Oh, I just wanted someone to recognize that I'm having a feeling and that there's a reason for it."

Kate DiCamillo: It's funny because it makes me think so much of what we were taught about guest service at Disney, which was, the very first thing you do is not start answering for what is wrong, but rather you say, "If I understand you right, your purse fell off of the ride..." So you tell them the problem back and 60% of the time that's all that people need, is to hear that they were heard. It calms people down.

And of course it would work for kids, you know?

Sarah Enni: Of course! I read that theory and it was like, "Wow!" You know, honestly, if someone talked to me that way, I'd be happy. Like, "Yeah. I just want you to know that I'm upset."

Kate DiCamillo: It's funny because one of the lines in this essay was just like, three years after that move to Florida, I remember my dad coming and taking us and buying us jelly beans and delivering the news that we can't live together anymore. And I'm like, "Do you think I'm stupid? You know? It's like, "Three years, duh!" And if you had said it in the beginning, then we would have been released from this limbo.

Sarah Enni: Yes. Yes. Which is so wild. And three years in the life of a kid? You're literally a whole different person. You know what I mean? Every cell in your body is different. Come on!

Kate DiCamillo: "Do you think I'm stupid?"

Sarah Enni: Let's talk about, well, and then Tale of Despereaux, Newbery Medal winner. So, you know, you're no slouch [both laugh]. Out the gate, you're doing pretty good. I believe, if I have the timeline right, after Tale of Despereaux, then you start writing Mercy Watson books too.

Kate DiCamillo: That is right. Yup.

Sarah Enni: Which are just the most adorable picture books.

Kate DiCamillo: Oh, it was so much fun to do those. It's just so much fun. And I sent the first one to my agent and she said, "I don't know what this is, but I love it." And then sent it to Candlewick and they're like, "We don't know what this is, but we love it. And we'll figure out a way to make it work." And Chris van Dusen and those fabulous illustrations of his. And it's great because writing a novel is this big heavy undertaking.

And then those stories about Mercy are a way to have fun on the page and just kind of rest in between novels.

Sarah Enni: Yeah. Do you mind kind of explaining what Mercy's about and how she came to be?

Kate DiCamillo: Mercy is a pig who lives with Mr.and Mrs. Watson and they're not pigs. And she loves, Mercy does, more than anything else in the world, toast with a great deal of butter on it. And that is the motivating factor for all of her [books]. People, when you write for kids, always say, "What lesson did you mean to impart here?" And those books are the answer. Nothing. No one learns anything. She's a pig. She wants toast [both laughing].

Sarah Enni: Go with it.

Kate DiCamillo: Yeah, that's basically it.

Sarah Enni: It felt like when I was sort of looking at the timeline for your career, the first three books do kind of touch on heavy subjects and novel writing is not easy. So it kind of felt like you were giving yourself chance to kind of...

Kate DiCamillo: Yeah not consciously. It was just the name of the pig, and the pig's face popped into my head and I thought, "Oh, that would be fun." But I didn't think, "Oh boy, give myself a break." But I found that they very much are. And when we got the first one, as soon as Holly sent it to Candlewick, it's like, "I want to do three of these." And then it's like, "No, I want to do six." And then it was like, "Oh my gosh, I should stop." Cause I could just do this.

And then there were the other ones that came, like The Further Tales From Deckawoo Drive. And that was a way to satisfy that urge to do more. And Karen Lotz who's the president at Candlewick was like, "What if we took these a step-up reading wise and made them like...?" And I was like, "Oh, that's a brilliant idea!" Because I just turned in the first one, Leroy (Leroy Ninker Saddles Up) is the same length as a Mercy Watson. And that was her idea to make it be a longer story.

Sarah Enni: Yeah, I love that. In one interview, I listened to you describe writing novels as like carrying a full bucket of water.

Kate DiCamillo: Oh, that thing. Yeah. I feel this way, particularly at the end, I feel like a chipmunk or some furry creature. Some small furry creature carrying something in a goblet, it's really precious. And I know that I should not have been entrusted with it. But nonetheless, I am carrying this thing. And it is my job to carry it all the way to the end of the journey and put it down safely. And so it's just like, "I got to do it. No one should have let a chipmunk do it. But nonetheless, this is what has been given to me. So I will try to do my best." And so it's always that thing at the end, when I'm doing the rewrites, that I feel that.

Sarah Enni: I love that you cast yourself as the chipmunk. Well, speaking of that, let's talk about Flora and Ulysses really quick, and then we will get to the trilogy, the most recent three books. But Flora and Ulysses, what a sweet book. Do you mind pitching a little bit of that for us?

Kate DiCamillo: Sure. That one is a very easy pitch. So what I say to the kids is, "It's a squirrel who gets sucked up in a vacuum cleaner and turned into a superhero." Which means he can do all the typical superhero things. He can fly, he's strong, and he writes poetry. And then I go, "It's based on a true story."

[Both laugh out loud]

Kate DiCamillo: And there's always a moment when the kids are like, "Wait a minute, something's wrong with that." I wrote it pretty soon after my mom had died. And my mom and I both have a terrible laugh. And we laughed in the same way where we throw our heads back. A friend of mine said it looked we were two baby birds waiting to be fed. And so, in a weird way, it's her book. Because I knew it would make her laugh.

Sarah Enni: Oh, I love that. It is very flamboyant?

Kate DiCamillo: Yeah, it's over the top.

Sarah Enni: Yeah. We kind of went from, as far as novels go, we kinda went from a fairytale then to this like, it's got comic books in it. It's a superhero. The point of view of a squirrel is involved. It's very bombastic in an interesting kind of way.

Kate DiCamillo: Yeah, it is. It is. And even right up until the very end. Many, many rewrites because, you know, you're writing about a squirrel in a vacuum cleaner. It would always make me laugh. And that was what I hung my hat on. Is like, "I'm down there doing the eighth rewrite and it's still making me laugh." And it is. It's over the top. And it was so much fun.

Sarah Enni: I read a review of it that someone said, "Probably not for nighttime."

Kate DiCamillo: [Laughing] Cause it gets the kid wound-up.

Sarah Enni: [Laughing] I thought that was the best endorsement for it ever! And Flora and Ulysses, wow I didn't write this down, but that was also a National Book... wow, I'm getting your awards mixed up.

Kate DiCamillo: Yeah. No Flora and Ulysses was a Newbery.

Sarah Enni: Is there any point at which you would expect that to happen to a book?

Kate DiCamillo: Oh, no. Well, this is the thing with Depereaux was I was still getting my sea legs. Then I would still read what you could read on the internet. People would say things to me on line. There were list serves and stuff. I do none of that now. I don't Google myself, the books, I don't read customer reviews. I'll read whatever Candlewick sends me.

So one: It's a Newbery Honor and a Newbery. That's unbelievable. And two: I'm not paying any attention. And three: It's about a squirrel. I mean, what are the chances? Funny books don't...you know? And so when they called on that one, that was out of the blue for me. Utterly out of the blue. The only thing I remember saying to them was, "But it's about a squirrel." And then thanking them.

I was asleep when they called, so it was 5:30. And I would have been getting up very soon to write. And so I was upstairs, I talked to them, I literally crawled down the stairs. Spent some time in the bathroom and thought, "Okay, what can I do here?" And I was working on Ramyie so then I just went in and wrote. Because it takes a long time for the press conference and everything before I have to show up with the public.

Sarah Enni: I was gonna say, before the entire machinery of what that means rolls into place. Which is another thing. I'm just fascinated by this, and I appreciate your patience with all of these questions about this, but there's not a little amount of disturbance to your personal life when you do have [this].

Kate DiCamillo: Yeah, it's huge. It's funny, cause Linda Sue Park, who won the Newbery for A Single Shard (also author of A Long Walk to Water: Based on a True Story). I knew Linda Sue cause we were at a conference together in upstate New York. She had just published her first or second book, and we sat next to each other at one of the lunch tables and it's like, "Oh, dah, dah, dah." And she's like, "I've never really done one of these before." And when the publisher called [her] and said, "Do you want to go to this conference?" And she said, "How much is it?" And they said, "500." She said, "Oh I can't afford that" And it's like, "No, no, no. Linda Sue, that's what they pay you." And she's like, "Wow. Really?"

So Linda Sue and I were friends and she's the one that gave me the Newbery. Typically somebody that you might know beforehand, and who has won, will tell you. She's the one that gave me the Newbery call for Despereaux because we had met at that. And so she said, "It's basically a year of your writing life."

And the other thing she said was, what I think Katherine Paterson had said to her, which is, "You can do this any way you want to do it. You can go out as much as you want to, where you can show up and give the speech. It's whatever feels comfortable to you."

And so Despereaux, I was probably still honoring commitments four years after the fact. And I didn't have the whole machinery in place. It was a little bit easier with Flora and Ulysses. I knew what was coming. And Candlewick and I were all in it together.

And you have to write a speech.

Sarah Enni: Right. Which is a lot.

Kate DiCamillo: Yes. And for me, who it takes me a long time to write, and you have to get it done relatively quickly cause you need to go in and record it. So everything has to stop while you do the speech, and you do all the interviews and stuff. Here are the alarming facts about how you're the sixth person who's won twice. And it's just like, "Ooooh, okay. Let's not think about it. Let's not think about it."

Sarah Enni: And how did you... I think it was ten years after the Tale of Despereaux?

Kate DiCamillo: It was. Yeah.

Sarah Enni: How did you think about being a public face at that time versus controlling your writing time and keeping that precious?

Kate DiCamillo: Well the first thing was Raymie was already well underway. Cause after I was on the bathroom floor weeping, that was what I went and worked on. So that was great. There was an anchor there. The other thing is that I had boy, I should know these dates. I had agreed to be National Ambassador. And I think that those two things...

Sarah Enni: Yeah. Flora and Ulysses came out in 2013 and you were the 2014 National Children's Ambassador.

Kate DiCamillo: So I was already lined up to do stuff. So a lot of that was already in place.

Sarah Enni: Wow. That's a big two years. Did you see your house?

Kate DiCamillo: [Laughs] No, not really. But in between. I'm such an introvert. And in the beginning I would think what I needed was just to be home and to write. And what I have found, and particularly where I learned it the most was doing that National Ambassador thing is, I need that connection. And I don't think of myself as needing it because I'm an introvert, but I went out there with my platform "Stories Connect Us." And what happened was that that message got delivered back to me.

I just got to go into room after room and connect with people because of stories. And so I found that what works best for writing is to be out there some. Not on the road all the time, but once a month. It's great.

Sarah Enni: Yeah. So we're talking about getting to meet a lot of really impressive people and other writers, and also just thousands of kids. So how has your public life, public facing part of your career. How or what has that impacted the actual writing itself do you think?

Kate DiCamillo: Sometimes after a big signing, Candlewick is really good about... Either Tracy Marra goes with me, or Jennifer Roberts who's her boss. And so people come through the line, adults and kids, and tell you story after story and it's overwhelming. And I'll say this to Jennifer a lot, "I don't know where to put this."

A lot of times when I get back home, I'll still need to talk on the phone to Jennifer because like, "You heard what that person said. You heard what that person said. Where do I put this? Where do I put this?" And we've had this conversation so many times, and always it comes down to, "There's no place to put this." And we quote what my best friend growing up always said to me, "It's not about you pumpkin."

And so it's just like, "That's great that story mattered so much to you and it did this, this and this." But I'm here. I'm absolutely present with that person when they're telling me the story, but it is not about me. You know?

Sarah Enni: Your presence was what was needed.

Kate DiCamillo: I guess. I don't know. Usually by the time I get home, I'm able to put it down. And then I go back in there and I write, because what happened out there has nothing to do with what I need to do here.

Sarah Enni: Yeah. I have a few friends that have had, let's say, really big book tours like that. And had that experience of six hour lines or whatever by the end of it. And emotional hangover is the word that gets kind of thrown around a little bit. From a total self-care, just as a human person perspective, what do you do even at the end of the night at your hotel room, how do you wind down?

Kate DiCamillo: Well, I ice my arm and I put Arnica gel on it after I ice it. And what do I do afterwards? Sometimes I'm so wound up I can't sleep. As Jennifer will say to me if sometimes if we have to do processing after I get back home, I have a group of friends that a lot of them are writers, but they're good readers and they're writers. But they're not, you know, going out and doing books and stuff. And they're not impressed with me at all. They don't care.

I remember when I did the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul and it's a beautiful old theater from the Vaudevillian [era]. I remember one of my friends saying to another one of my friends, "I can't believe all these people are here for Kate." They don't care. They're not impressed by it. They love me, and it's great that I do this thing that I love to do, but they're not impressed with me. And that matters a lot. They just see me.

Sarah Enni: Yeah, that's great. And it's important to have people around who can...

Kate DiCamillo: Right. Go, "What are all these people here for?"

Sarah Enni: Helpfully deflate the balloon. A lot of times family is good for that.

Kate DiCamillo: Right. Absolutely.

Sarah Enni: "You're still just a bratty little kid." Okay, let's talk about this most recent trilogy. Raymie Nightingale, Louisiana's Way Home, and Beverly, Right Here, which is the most recent one. I'm so intrigued by this, as a trilogy.

Kate DiCamillo: Right. Which is of course not what I intended, because I can tell you've done your homework, so you already know that. Yeah, no I didn't. It was not at all what I intended. And that goes back to the very beginning and finding the voice of something. And Louisiana's voice being kind of like The Rhyme of the Ancient Marriner and the wedding guest. She just pulled me by the lapels and would not let go. So I had to answer for the voice.

And then I had to do Beverly, even though Beverly never would have wanted a book about her. But that was like trying to get something wild to come up to me. I had to be so still and wait for her. She's not a grandiose person like Louisiana.

Sarah Enni: Right, right. I want to talk about that, and first person versus third as well. But let's start with Raymie. If you could pitch that book for us then we can kind of go from there.

Kate DiCamillo: Sure. Well I could anti-pitch it and say where I started, which I thought, "Oh it's gonna be a funny book about an inept child who ends up in a beauty contest." Like the last kind of kid that you would put in a beauty contest, i.e. me! Right? Cause I was in the Little Miss Orange Blossom [contest]. My mother, like I said, is gone. So I can't ask her why in the world she put me in there. But I remember standing on the stage and thinking, "I should not be here."

So it was like, "Okay, it's gonna be funny." And this child is gonna make a fool out of herself in the Little Miss Central Florida Tire Contest. But it was like, "Okay, why is a child like that in there?" And then it's like, "Uh-oh. It's because her father is gone and she's gonna try to get him back." And then it became a totally different kind of book, and is probably the closest to my own experience.

Sarah Enni: And I wanted to ask about that. Obviously, there is a lot of us in everything that we write, whether we want it to be or not.

Kate DiCamillo: Absolutely. It's there whether you know it is or not.

Sarah Enni: Yeah. But this is maybe almost a couple decades after you started writing professionally. Then it kind of finally came about.

Kate DiCamillo: And you know, it's funny because it's there in every book, but it's almost like I kind of turned around and faced it directly, in this one. And it's like, "Okay." And I had enough tools I think by that point to be able to...

Sarah Enni: Do you mean writing skills tools? Or, emotion tools?

Kate DiCamillo: Yes. Both. Probably. To be able to do it. And I remember a review I saw on an early copy of it, and it said something about being first person. This is a reviewer who is really smart, really good reader. And I said to my editor, "Oh, get them to change that because it's third." But it's so close. It's such close third that it feels like first.

And that I wouldn't have been able to do in the beginning. Because first-person is so much fun and such a high wire act. And it's what I struggled with in Louisiana because I knew enough by that point to think, "No, we're not going down this road." Because the willing suspension of disbelief is so easily messed with, but it was also that voice was so strong and she would not have it any other way.

Sarah Enni: Yeah. I want to ask about that, cause I heard you say that in another interview, the 'willing suspension of disbelief.' How do you mean that?

Kate DiCamillo: I mean that you, whether you're eight or fifty when you're reading, you don't stop and think, "Wait a minute. A ten-year-old wouldn't say that." And you're pulled out of the story. Because you do enter into a pact with the story. You willingly buy a lot of things that are hard to buy, but there is a point where you think, "No, no, no, you're telling me a story."

And so anything that trips that trigger and pulls you out of it, where you don't trust the voice.

Sarah Enni: Do you think that's particularly a challenge at the age level that you're writing for? I guess the reason I'm asking is, first-person happens a lot in YA. But I think it might be easier for people to buy that the young adult could have a different range of perceptions.

Kate DiCamillo: I think that first person is really hard no matter where you're doing it. And I think it's something that there's an easy way in to it. And so it's an easy place to start because there's an immediacy to it that you don't get any other place. And if you find the voice... So I never thought that I would do another first-person book and there's Louisiana. And I might do it again after that.

But I know what I'm giving up. There's a lot of stuff that you cannot put in because you can only be in that head.

Sarah Enni: Yes. You're very tied. It's kind of the anti-movie.

Kate DiCamillo: Right? Right. It's just here. And so it's not just that you have to have the reader believe you, it's also that you are so limited in what you can do.

Sarah Enni: And I mean, we talked about the sort of bombastic narrative voice that can ease you through a story. I mean, first person is so relentless. Either your main character is funny and gives you a few breaks, or it's just sort of so constant.

Kate DiCamillo: Yeah, that's right. And it's that way for you as a writer, and that way for the readers sometimes too.

Sarah Enni: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, "How hard it is for a reader?" I'm like, "We spent five years writing that. How do you think we had it!" Let's talk about Beverly cause that is the most recent book and it kind of sums up, whatever arc you might've been going for over the three of them. But also it strikes me that Beverly is so reticent to tell her story, but in some ways she's the most extreme version of that thing I brought up earlier where she's sort of not... She's just a grownup.

Kate DiCamillo: She has raised herself. And not only is she a grown up, she's a child parenting the adult. And it's funny because I never know what I'm doing. Maybe there are writers that do. And then when I get really good interviews, pre-interviews are particularly helpful before a book comes out, I started to figure out, "Okay, this is what's going on in that book that I just wrote." And it gives me language to talk about it. Because I don't always know.

And so much of what Beverly is, and this comes back to me personally, is this thing of Beverly is very good at loving, even though she seems so crusty, she's very tender hearted. But she is not good at letting herself be loved. And this book is her letting herself be loved. And so that was huge for me in this trajectory of everything that basically started with Winn Dixie and this onslaught of, "Okay. 5,000 copies. Okay, maybe at some point I can go down to working 20 hours a week." All of that I had in my head, but I had no idea that it was gonna get that much love, you know? And so it was overwhelming. And I don't know that I was able to let it in.

Sarah Enni: And was that protecting yourself?

Kate DiCamillo: Um [pauses], It's disbelief. But also, you get me fresh off the essay and having figured things out. It's a lot of childhood stuff. And you said earlier that thing about we reveal ourselves whether we intend to or not when we write, but we also figure out so much of who we are by telling the story. So I get to tell these stories, but it also gets to heal me.

Sarah Enni: Just coming from whatever emotional baggage I'm carrying around and related to what you just said about your friends who sort of can...

Kate DiCamillo: They don't care.

Sarah Enni: Can take or leave the book part, but care about you. It does feel when you have such objective career success, when you're talking about books, people can love your book, but they don't know you. They might think they know you, I feel there might be a level of emotional... trying to protect yourself from people who are making assumptions.

Kate DiCamillo: Or, it's that thing where people... I'm always working to let them see what a mess I am. I know. Because what's still the most magical thing in the world to me, is a book. And so you think the person must be magical too. And the person is just a person and doing their best. But you still, as a passionate reader, you think, "That must be somebody extraordinary." This is not somebody extraordinary. I mean, it is extraordinary that I have found the thing that I'm supposed to do, and that I get to do it, and then I get paid to do it. That's extraordinary. But the person, no. You know?

Sarah Enni: You do a very good job of being humble in interviews and sharing embarrassing stories.

Kate DiCamillo: [Laughing] It's funny because, two years ago. No, a year ago. [I] went and did Ann Patchett's store (author of Bel Canto, State of Wonder, The Magician’s Assistant, and many more). I had gone before and then I'd met her a couple of times. Any way, long story short, she and I became friends. But it's odd because then I was able to watch. I thought, "This person, who me the reader, these folks really matter." And it took a while for her not to be Ann Patchett. You know? And so it's what we do. We turn writers into thirty foot people on, you know?

Sarah Enni: I mean, I live in LA, I get it. [Kate laughs outloud]. And writers seem like, "Whoa, we got it easy, compared to some people whose burden of character they have to carry around is just really wild!"

Kate DiCamillo: Right. You can't be like me and get in an argument on a plane with a ten-year-old. This was a long time ago.

Sarah Enni: I thought you're gonna say that was today!

Kate DiCamillo: No, it was a long time ago. He was reading Winn Dixie and I'm like, "Should I say something? Should I not say something? I'll say something." And I said, "I wrote that book." And he said, "No, you didn't."

Both laughing out loud!

Sarah Enni: Oh, what a blessing. I love that. The perfect ten-year-old response, "Lady, stop pulling my leg. Get outta here!" That is hilarious. Was he there with a parent? Did the truth come out or were you...?

Kate DiCamillo: Uh, it devolved into me showing him my driver's license.

Sarah Enni: [Laughing] God, I love that. That is amazing. The other thing, really quick and then I will let you move on with your life, but I want to ask about setting it back in time. Then I want to ask about these three books and just how they interact. But what was the decision to set the book, I think the first book is 1975. And then it moves kind of forward in time.

Kate DiCamillo: Like I said, it's the closest I've come to putting me in a book. The timing is a little off. You wouldn't be old enough to know this. But I knew when I was doing it and I thought, "I wonder if my editor is gonna call me on this?" And she's younger too. She's fifteen years younger than me.

She said, "It's 1976. We can't have it be 1976 because everything stopped in '76. It was nothing but the bicentennial." So then it would've been very much a part of the book. So then we went back to '75. But I knew it was gonna be in the mid-seventies cause that's where I was yanked. That was it. It was all so alive for me there.

And then to move it two years. I didn't really intend for that to happen, but then it did. And it's like, "Okay, now two years again because Beverly's old enough to run away." So it wasn't even intentional, it just kind of happened.

Sarah Enni: It did leave Beverly, I mean, is she one of the oldest characters you've written?

Kate DiCamillo: Yeah, she's fourteen.

Sarah Enni: Fourteen? You're dancing on the borderline with YA there.

Kate DiCamillo: I know. But it's not at all YA at the same time. For as hard shelled as she is. And as much as she's acted like an adult for so long, she is still so much a kid, that it still lands in middle-grade.

Sarah Enni: When trilogies come out, there's one larger arc over the whole thing. What do you think is is?

Kate DiCamillo: I'll wait for you to tell me. What is it?

Sarah Enni: I don't know [laughing].

Kate DiCamillo: I don't know either. I guess it's, there's the first fifteen years of my life basically. That's basically it.

Sarah Enni: It felt like three versions of yourself.

Kate DiCamillo: Right. And you know, there's that point, Elmer and Beverly's friend who is going to Dartmouth and he tells her, "You can go to." And it seems crazy to her, but that's the beginning of the leaving, you know? So yeah. It's three different versions of me. The me that left.:

Also, I said this with Winn Dixie, was a love song, in a way, to the South. This is also me loving Florida and singing about Florida.

Sarah Enni: Do you think, and this is a little repetitive, but I'm just gonna ask it a different way. What if anything do you think spurred you into doing three such autobiographical feeling books? Or, excavating that part of your life?

Kate DiCamillo: I think you can almost trace it as, you know, here's Winn Dixie and I get further and further away from the South, from Florida. We go into fairytales. We go into squirrels and vacuum cleaners, is basically a fairytale. And then it's almost like I've come back full circle to where I started with a few more tools in my belt, you know?

Sarah Enni: Yeah. Where do you go from here?

Kate DiCamillo: Well, Sarah, I've got a novel we've copy edited, so I don't know if I'm supposed to talk about it.. But fall of next year.

Sarah Enni: So I love to wrap up with advice. You've given amazing advice the whole way, but just in case there's someone listening who is really specifically interested in writing middle-grade. I'd be interested in what you think, knowing now how the industry is now. What advice would you have for someone?

Kate DiCamillo: Don't write to the industry. Don't, it's impossible. When we go back to the beginning of the conversation and Candlewick. "Candlewick? Candlewick is known for picture books. What are you doing fiction?" So if I had made decisions based on what was the best play. You follow, it sounds really cheesy, but you have to follow your gut, your heart.

It's like, "What do you need to write? How do you connect with it?" So if you're lucky enough to get somebody interested, what's that conversation like with the editor? Are they seeing the same thing that you're seeing for the book? You think that you don't have any control at all and that you have to take the first thing that comes along. But in reality, what you have to do is be true to what you need to write.

And then there's a certain point where you become the protector of the story. And so you're making decisions not for yourself but for what's best for the story. And so if you have a conversation with somebody and what they're saying they want you to do doesn't make any sense, but they're offering you a contract, I would really think about signing the contract because you're protecting the story.

Sarah Enni: I think that's really good advice. And I'm just gonna tag on one last one cause I can't resist. But since you are uniquely positioned here to give advice about school visits and speaking publicly about your work, do you have any tips for people who are just getting started on that journey?

Kate DiCamillo: Well, I would say, and I don't do many of them at all anymore. But what I remember in the beginning is I remember, I was working full time at the bookstore. Candlewick, again back in the days of phone, Candlewick called at work. And somebody had dropped out of giving a keynote at the last minute, and they needed somebody to come and do a keynote at this conference. And I'm like, "Ooh, I work eight to four that day." And I remember this is Ann Ursaleggi at Candlewick, she said, "Kate, what I would think is you might want to just ride this wave while it's happening."

So that's one thing. I didn't have a speech, I'd never given a keynote. But I went and did it. So when the offer comes, go. And also when going and talking to somebody's fifth grade class for no money at all, absolutely you should go and do it. Because one of the great things that I discovered doing this, is how much I really love being around kids and talking with them.

So you can go in there and figure out, "Is this something that I can and want to do?" And also every time you do it, you learn more. I tell this story quite a bit, but let's finish with this. My very first school visit, and I'm standing up in front of the class with the teacher, and she says to this wonderful group of fifth graders, "Okay, we're gonna talk about... this is person who wrote Because of Winn Dixie. And now what we're gonna do is talk about the themes in this book."

And I'm like, "There goes the money." It's like, "I have no idea what the themes are in this book. And those fabulous kids and that fabulous teacher they, one at a time, put the themes down on the chalkboard. And it's like, "Oh, I can see where all of that is true." And then I wrote it down and took it into the next school and said, "Let's talk about the themes in this book".

So you have to be willing to take a chance.

Sarah Enni: Yeah. I love that. Oh my gosh. Thank you for giving me so much time today. This was so fun.

Kate DiCamillo: Oh, it was great.

Sarah Enni: Thank you. And I'll talk to you again soon.

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Sarah Enni: Thank you so much to Kate. Follow her on Facebook at facebook.com/kate DiCamillo and follow me on both Twitter and Instagram @Sarah Enni, and the show @FirstDraftPod (Twitter and Instagram). Today's show is brought to you by Steven Sater's, Alice By Heart, which is out from Penguin Random House now.

Hayley Hirschman produces First Draft and today's episode was produced and sound designed by Callie Wright. The theme music is by Dan Bailey and the logo was designed by Collin Keith. Thanks to production assistant Tasneed Daud, and transcriptionist-at-large Julie Anderson. And as ever, thanks to you, unlikely Miss Orange Blossom contenders for listening.

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