Goodreads asked Nancy Wolff:

What’s your advice for aspiring writers?

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.

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