Ask the Author: Nancy Wolff
Answered Questions (8)
Nancy Wolff
It would have to be two worlds. Terry Pratchett's Discworld, I would go to Lancre and to Ankh-Morpork and be a tourist. Deb Harkness' world of witches, vampires and demons and be a witch who could time-travel.
Nancy Wolff
Have a story you want to tell, even if you only know vaguely what it might be, or only a character or a scene. Then be open to where it carries you. Get your characters talking to each other -- they will tell you the story. Follow your instincts. Enjoy yourself, writing should not be a chore [except occasionally where you have to push that rock up a hill]. Do not write to please anyone but yourself. If you please yourself you've done well. Read, read a lot. I didn't start writing fiction until well after retirement age. Because I didn't know I would love doing it, and that's because I wrote advertising for a living, which made a decent living but wasn't enjoyable per se. Even so, I will procrastinate about opening a chapter or a new chapter and actually starting to write. Which is nuts since writing is one of my happy places, and nothing happens until I'm actually doing it. But who ever said writers were well-balanced? At the moment I am procrastinating about getting back to the last quarter of my new novel, A Wedding in Venice, which is a sequel to The Dragons of Wyvern Hall. I have a lot of questions I want answered, but this won't happen until I'm doing the work. As always, my own characters surprise me. I like that.
Nancy Wolff
Re-reading Laini Taylor's Strange the Dreamer & Muse of Nightmares, also some Terry Pratchett. And Deb Harkness trilogy A Discovery of Witches. Reading Diane Wynne Jones The Merlin Conspiracy. Just read Jodi Taylor's When Did You Last See Your Father. And reading my own novel, The Dragons of Wyvern Hall aloud to my daughter. Many others I can't think of right now.
Nancy Wolff
Damned if I know -- well, bits of it from my childhood, some from books I've loved, I read all the time, much more than I watch TV or films. And a lot of it is a surprise to me -- I start writing and the characters take over. This may not always be the case, but I'm enjoying it while it lasts.
Nancy Wolff
So far it seems the stories 'want' to be told, I just have to sit down and type. Maybe because I started with fiction so late in life [I'm in my 70s] a lot of stories have been just waiting for me to get the message that I need to tell them.
Nancy Wolff
The sequel to my first YA fantasy novel, The Dragons of Wyvern Hall. The next book is provisionally titled A Wedding in Venice and has the same cast of strange and wonderful characters plus a number of new ones.
Nancy Wolff
Sit down every day and write something, a note to a friend, a post on FB, write, and then turn to your book and write something, anything, and more often than not it starts to tell its story to you. That's my experience. I've never [so far, fingers-crossed] had serious writer's block.
Nancy Wolff
For me it has been finding out that I love to write fiction, my own stories. I wrote "to order" as an advertising copywriter for years, the money was nice, but I can't say I ever enjoyed the writing, although I got satisfaction that I was good at it. So I never imagined I'd love to write, and didn't start until very late in life when several friends I believed in kept urging me. I loving writing my debut fantasy novel, and I'm loving writing the sequel now.
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