Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Writing Tips from AWW 2011 Keynoter, Nancy Pickard

We recently asked Nancy Pickard to share her top three writing tips.

Nancy is the New York Times bestselling author of 18 novels and dozens of short stories. Her current stand-alone novel, THE SCENT OF RAIN AND LIGHTNING, was on the extended New York Times Best Seller list for five weeks and was the Barnes & Noble Main Recommended Book for the spring of 2010. Nancy is also the author of a book for writers, 7 STEPS ON THE WRITER'S PATH. She will be delivering our 2011 AWW keynote address on July 9, 2011 at 7:00 p.m., and leading the fiction session of our morning classes during the workshop. (Learn more about Nancy on our Faculty page.)

Nancy's top three tips:
• If anybody makes you feel like not writing, run like hell in the opposite direction.

• It's all process. Failure is process. Rejection is process. Rewriting is process. Throwing it away and starting over is process. Getting it right is process. Even getting published is process. If we were inventors or scientists we'd think nothing of "failing." We'd just clean our test tubes, take what we learned from "failing," and then start the next experiment. Excuse me while I adjust my lab coat and get back to work on my book.

• It's not easy. Anybody who tells you it should be easy has never written anything worth reading.

Want to learn more from Nancy and the rest of our AWW 2011 Faculty? Register now for the workshop! Slots are filling quickly.
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1 comment:

  1. CanadaMarch 29, 2012 at 12:00 PM

    I absolutely loved Nancy Pickard's The Virgin of Small Plains, but this book is even better. Nancy is a magician at making you feel what her characters are feeling and at weaving enough suspense into her writing that you just know that something dreadful is going to happen on the next page, and you have to get to it to find out what. She uses different viewpoint characters who only see part of what's going on and understand even less, and lies, and hidden objects to draw you into a mystery that will lead you in many different directions until you're shocked by the surprise at the end.

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