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.)
To Repair permissions, launch Disk Utility, found in the Utilities folder in your Applications folder, click on First Aid, then on Repair Permissions.
To delete AppleWorks’ preference files, go to HD > Users > (your account) > 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. Also, you need to delete the preferences after any crash of AppleWorks.
You may also have run into the "Recent Items bug" that has been around since AppleWorks 6 was released in March, 2000. It can make it appear that AppleWorks has frozen or failed to launch & can (rarely) cause crashing. The user tip by Dale Gillard,
AppleWorks slow? Spinning ball appears?, explains a lot.
