Soon, Dav began writing the text (on paper this time). Below are some hand-written pages of an early draft of the story. Notice that Dav can’t seem to write anything without drawing lots of little pictures all over the page. That type of thing used to drive his teachers crazy when Dav was a kid, but it’s very helpful to him now. Drawing while writing is a great way to overcome the often paralyzing “writer’s block” that can sometimes happen when a person writes.

“You use different parts of your brain when you draw and when you write. So sketching pictures is a nice way to give my ‘writing brain’ a rest when it needs one. Often, when I can’t think of something to write, I’ll start drawing. Then suddenly, when I’m not even thinking about writing, the perfect words will come to me.” — Dav Pilkey

"Sometime during this stage, I was talking with my editor, Bonnie Verburg on the phone. I told her about the new story, and she wanted to hear all the details. Bonnie liked my story idea very much, but she suggested that I change the ending to make it more dramatic. In my original draft (see above) the dogs had gotten chased up into a tree. Bonnie suggested that it might be better if they got chased into a pond or a lake. So I rewrote the ending using Bonnie's suggestion. I think that the pond scenes were a great improvement, not only because they added drama to the story, but because the illustrations ended up being much prettier than the original scene I had in mind. Thanks, Bonnie!" — Dav Pilkey