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Nancy Butts

Goodreads Author

Born

in Cleveland, Ohio, The United States

Website

http://www.nancybutts.com

Genre

Young Adult, Children's, Nonfiction

Influences

Madeleine L'Engle, Oliver Sacks, publisher Stephen Roxburgh ...more

Member Since

May 2013

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Nancy Butts has had her head stuck in a book ever since she learned to read--and she's been writing stories for just as long.

She published her first poem at age ten, and decided after reading Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wrinkle in Time" in fifth grade that she wanted to be a writer, too. But she never thought she was good enough, so by the sixth grade she decided to be an astronomer instead: and after that a lawyer, Congresswoman, spy, and finally a doctor. And if she hadn't gone to Duke University, where she learned that in order to be premed she had to hang out in chemistry lectures with 500 other students, she might be a doctor today. Instead, she took a seminar in Zen Buddhism and decided that spending all her time talking about big ideas i Nancy Butts has had her head stuck in a book ever since she learned to read--and she's been writing stories for just as long.

She published her first poem at age ten, and decided after reading Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wrinkle in Time" in fifth grade that she wanted to be a writer, too. But she never thought she was good enough, so by the sixth grade she decided to be an astronomer instead: and after that a lawyer, Congresswoman, spy, and finally a doctor. And if she hadn't gone to Duke University, where she learned that in order to be premed she had to hang out in chemistry lectures with 500 other students, she might be a doctor today. Instead, she took a seminar in Zen Buddhism and decided that spending all her time talking about big ideas in small classes with bearded professors was what college was supposed to be about. She switched her major to religion--with a minor in Russian of all things--happily haunted the stacks of the college library for four years, and when she graduated, had absolutely zero idea what she wanted to do with her life.

So she sat down, read all 88 Agatha Christie mystery novels in two months, took a job in a lab, got married, moved to Georgia, and spent the next six years thinking that she really should have applied to medical school after all. Then she tried PA school instead, had an early mid-life crisis, and when someone asked her what she saw herself doing in ten years, she suddenly remembered what she had known back in fifth grade: she wanted to write.

She quit school, and within a few months she had landed a job as a reporter at a small-town newspaper. She spent the next eleven years working there, writing several stories each week and winning awards. But once her son was born she secretly started to write her first children's book--the story that ultimately became her debut novel, "Cheshire Moon,” which won the respect of members of the deaf community for its portrayal of a young deaf girl who will communicate only in Sign. This book was soon followed by the science fiction novel "The Door in the Lake," was an ALA Quick Pick and a Scholastic Book Club selection.

Since then Nancy spends much of her time working as a creative writing teacher and manuscript editor. Some of the people whose books she's had the privilege of shepherding into the world are Monica Roe, author of the YA novel "Thaw"; Alberto Hazan, author of the YA fantasy series "The League of Freaks"; and Jennifer Lundquist, author of the middle grade novel, "Seeing Cinderella." Nancy has also published several books for the direct-to-school education market, and is the editor of a how-to book on revision entitled "Write it Right!" by the author Sandra Asher.

Then in April 2013 she published her first book for adults: "Spontaneous Combustion: A Writer's Primer for Creative Revival." This book was inspired by the writer's malaise often suffered by her students and clients: and by her own efforts to write her way out of creative drought.

Somewhere during these years she also managed to land a spot as a contestant on the TV game show "Jeopardy" and was a one-day champion.

But writing fiction for kids continues to be her passion, and she is working hard on another middle grade novel set in a sleepy Southern town much like the one where she lives: only with more ghosts.

There is just one ghost in the 130-year-old Victorian cottage where Nancy lives and works: one humming ghost, and far too few electric outlets for the Mac laptops which are her auxiliary brain. When she's not teaching, editing, or trying to carve out time for her own writing, Nancy is an avid walker; and she also likes to grow herbs, make quilts, knit miles and miles of scarves, play the mountain dulcimer and Finnish kantele, be the Mac tech support person for everyone she knows, and tend to her slightly neurotic Newfoundland dog, Yukon. ...more

61 posts
Nancy Butts's Blog

Treat yourself; free downloads of two wondrous new MG fantasies

Just in time for the holidays, two of my editing clients are staging a joint book launch on November 22nd.

It has been both my privilege and my pleasure to be a guide along the way for these two marvelous middle grade authors, and if you love magical fantasy and stories about worlds-within-worlds, you owe it to yourself and to any young readers in your life to download these books–and indeed, all Read more of this blog post »

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Published on November 22, 2016 05:56

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Nancy Butts’s books

Average rating: 3.79 · 215 ratings · 36 reviews · 5 distinct works • Similar authors

	The Door in the Lake 3.76 avg rating — 189 ratings — published 1994 — 15 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Cheshire Moon 3.88 avg rating — 16 ratings — published 1992 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Spontaneous Combustion: A Writer's Primer for Creative Revival 4.30 avg rating — 10 ratings — published 2013 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Cheshire Moon by Butts, Nancy (July 17, 1996) Hardcover 1st 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Cheshire Moon by Butts, Nancy (1996) Hardcover 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Nancy Butts…

Nancy is Currently Reading

Nancy Butts is currently reading

In Shock: My Journey from Death to Recovery and the Redemptive Power of Hope

by Rana Awdish (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: currently-reading, medicine, memoir

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Jul 10, 2019 11:57AM

Topics Mentioning This Author

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Nancy’s Quotes

“Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules of Writing

1. Never open a book with weather.
2. Avoid prologues.
3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said”…he admonished gravely.
5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
6. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things.
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.

If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.”
― Elmore Leonard

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