"Write," Blake Edwards Said to Julie Andrews

In the summer of 1970, Blake and I were in Paris filming Darling Lili. I was trying to do many things at once, traveling with a new blended family and working, and I'd come home to a place run amok. Beds weren't made; the children weren't brushing their teeth. The Mary Poppins in me emerged, and I said, "Listen, guys, we have to get our act together. Let's play a game. If you fail to do what you need to do, you'll have to pay up."

Our eldest daughter, Jenny, who was about 13 going on 32 at the time, said, "That's fine, but you have to play too. You'll have to stop cursing so much." I guess I hadn't realized, in the frustration of trying to do everything, that I must have been slightly off my guard, so to speak.

Well, in typical mum fashion, I was the first to lose. I asked Jenny, "What will my payment be?" And she replied, "Write me a story."

I had always enjoyed scribbling little notes for Jenny, Geoffrey and Emma. At first I thought, Oh, okay, easy. I'll write two pages, an Aesop's fable of some sort. But Jenny was a new stepdaughter for me -- Blake and I were married in 1969, so we were still newlyweds. I thought, Wouldn't this be a lovely chance to bond? I came up with an idea about a girl who finds a hideaway all her own. When I told Blake, he said, "It's terrific. I think you should do it. Go on, darling, I know you can."

In truth, I found the actual writing daunting. It was the first time I had ever attempted to develop a detailed story from scratch. Blake is the head honcho in our house as far as writing goes -- I mean, the man has six major ideas a minute. He's always been this way, going back to his youth, when he wrote for radio and had to create two shows a week. He'd work all night to get it done.

By 1970 he already had an enormous body of work as a director -- Breakfast at Tiffany's, Days of Wine and Roses, The Pink Panther, A Shot in the Dark and The Great Race.

Of course, I'd spent most of my life singing and acting. The joy for me as a performer was interpreting the ideas of others. Someone else would write a role or a script, and I'd breathe life into it, as in My Fair Lady on Broadway and Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music on film. Now I was faced with blank pages on a legal pad. Terrifying.

But with Blake urging me on, I began to develop the story. I would sit at the desk and fill out my ideas. Often I'd get stuck, and I literally would not know where to go next. Blake would say, "Julie, the secret to writing is to let the pages grow. Just keep going. You can always go back and fix."

What a gift it was to have him in my corner. I've seen how Blake gets when he's doing his own writing, and it's fascinating. He'll sit on the bed very quiet, very withdrawn, in a sort of reverie, even with the TV and radio on. The family knows not to bother Dad during this winding-up process, because after that it will just spill, usually long into the night. I know when Blake is finished -- I'll hear him pottering around in the kitchen, fixing himself something.

For me, writing turned out to be a series of fits and starts, and I needed the constant encouragement. When I finally completed the story, Blake illustrated the manuscript -- he's a very talented painter. And when I gave it to Jenny, she was delighted. My agent thought the story should be published, so after another year I was able to give Jenny a finished book. I inscribed it, "To Jenny, because I promised." That book, Mandy, is in print to this day, to my utter delight. I wrote it under the name Julie Andrews Edwards, which is a heck of a long name to write at book signings. But I owed Blake that, at least, for all his generosity.

After that I started something else, a fantasy called The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles, which was published in 1974. I didn't write again for a long time, not until after the operation on my throat, in 1997.

I had to have an intracordal cyst removed, which was like a blister inside my vocal cord. And I wasn't quite sure if I would ever sing again. It was a very slow process, a hard time. But, ever the optimist, I decided that while I was waiting to find out if my voice would come back, I should get on with the rest of my life. Including my writing.

I began a series of books about a cat, my Little Bo books. After that, my publisher wondered if I had any ideas for very small children. Quite by chance I happened to be talking to my daughter Emma, who by then had a young child, my grandson Sam. And I asked her what books she would pick out for Sam at the library if she could. She said, "Oh, Mum, there's no contest. It would be a book about trucks -- dump trucks." She could find how-to books about construction sites, but not a family-oriented story about trucks.

So she and I developed the idea together, and the Dumpy the Dump Truck series was born. The illustrator is Tony Walton, who is my ex-husband, Emma's father. We thought nepotism would be just right -- we'd keep the whole thing in the family.

By now I'd learned that my voice was not going to get much better. Oh, speaking-wise it was fine, but singing was no longer something I could seriously consider, with the exception of how I sort of sing-speak "Your Crowning Glory" in Princess Diaries 2. That wasn't a huge comeback by any stretch -- not a comeback at all. I'm still making movies and doing television narration. In fact, I've never been busier. But my writing has really leapt into focus for me now.

And in the early days, there was Blake, saying, "Keep at it. You can do it." What fabulous words, for anyone.

With daughter Emma, Julie Andrews runs The Julie Andrews Collection, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.