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Whenever you do an update, it's a good idea to do two maintenance tasks, one for the system (Repair Permissions) and one for AppleWorks (delete preferences). (Thanks to Barry for this way to format this very common answer.) Even though you've deleted the preferences, you may not have gotten all the necessary ones at the same time.
To Repair permissions launch Disk Utility then clcik on Repair Permissions.
To delete AppleWorks’ preference files, go to HD > Users > Library > Preferences. Find and delete the file com.apple.appleworks.plist. Find and open the folder AppleWorks in this Preferences folder, then delete all of the enclosed files (with the exception of the Button Bar Preferences if you have customized the Button Bars). AppleWorks will recreate the preference files as it needs them.
The other big cause of the failure of AppleWorks to launch isn't really a failure to launch, but just being so slow it seems that way. As we upgrade our systems, AppleWorks gets more & more sensitive to the number of aliases in the Recent Items folders. Emptying these will speed up AppleWorks. See
this user tip by Dale Gillard for more info.