An Interview with Nancy Peacock, Part 3

For a final question, I asked for Nancy Peacock's advice to beginning writers.

NP: There are two things I tell all beginning writers. They are my mantras and they carry me through every book I write. The first is "No one's going to do it for you." Meaning, if you want to write you're going to have to figure out how to fit it in with everything else you have to do, and everyone has things to do besides writing, even writers. The second mantra is "You can fix it later." Meaning, keep the story moving forward. Don't try to get page 1 perfect before moving on to page 2, and so on. Writing can be a very forgiving art if you understand that you have many passes at a particular story. For sure, get it as right as you can before you send it out, but know that this doesn't happen in one day.

And, yes, I've come to learn that both of these are true for me. Often when I'm on a roll with a story, I'll even skip words, leaving behind empty brackets because I know I need a dictionary or thesaurus, but I don't want to interfere with my progress. The best second "pass" for me becomes typing my first-draft handwritten scribble into a Word document.

But Nancy's first one, "No one's going to do it for you," is enough to get me back to the story right now.