BooksByJackie.com
Books By Jackie
Jackie Woolley's book on personal and spiritual growth, All the Things You Aren't...Yet, under the name of Jackie Humphries, was published by Word Books in 1980. It has been over 35 years now since the book was written. It is so long out of print it has become a collector’s item. "If I were to write it today," she insists, "I would say it somewhat differently. But this book is important to me because it represents my thinking at the time it was written." There are still a few copies available through Amazon.com.
Her articles have appeared in national publications, including Christian Science Monitor, Off Duty Magazine, Christian Herald, Sunday Digest, Lutheran Digest, and Busy Freelancer. Her photo and excerpts of her survival story from breast cancer appeared in Prevention Magazine. She has published in the Story Circle Journal and Story Circle Network.
The Noble Generation, Volume II: Stories of the American Experience, published by Barnes & Noble (November, 2004), includes her story, "The Love of Her Life," p. 228, a poignant account of her mother's first great love. The book is available at booksellers and online.
Jackie's story "Belonging Place" appears in an anthology, What Wildness is This: Women Write About the Southwest, edited by Susan Wittig Albert, et al. A significant anthology of writings by women, celebrating their experiences in the landscapes of the Southwest, this book was published by the University of Texas Press (March, 2007). This collection demonstrates and illuminates the rich diversity of environments of the Southwest, as well as the extraordinary range of women's voices and women's experiences of the land. The collection is made up of a variety of literary forms—memoir, creative non-fiction, essay, poetry—and includes pieces by both emerging and established writers. Jackie is both an emerging and established writer, but she is humbled and proud to be among the wonderful contributors/authors in this book. She says it is probably the closest she will ever get to her fifteen minutes of fame. Her story appears on page 205. The book is currently in bookstores and available from the University of Texas Press. It is also available from Story Circle Network .
The Sound of Windmills is her first novel and she has been writing it most of her life. It can be purchased online at CreateSpace. It is a story of survival, especially of the females in this fiction story set in the mythical town of Langor, Texas. These women strive to make it in a man’s world where educating females is generally considered a waste of time and money, and a woman is thought to be too delicate to work outside the home. Neither cowboys, rednecks, or wheeler-dealers, these are simple, country folks, who, like pathfinders of old, often lurch this way and that, fuzzy about their exact direction, but stubborn in their determination to reach their eventual goal. These soft-hard people know how to survive tough times. When their dreams die, they make new ones. They struggle with the need to have power and control over their lives and, lacking the proper role models, often err when they rely on what they’ve been told, rather than trust their own instincts. They grapple with their traditional world and eventually learn to say, each in her own way, what King Lear once declared: “I will do such things, what they are yet I know not, but they shall be the terrors of the earth.” Jackie has successfully recaptured those days when the windmill turned and creaked in the wind; when kids took castor oil for almost every ailment; and when people worked from sun to sun and went to town to do their trading on Saturday afternoon.
Jackie Woolley’s new book, Sex, Lies & Stories, Memoir of a Frustrated Writer, is dedicated to the millions of writers out there who have heard the call but never had the thrill of a twenty-city publicity tour, a review in Publisher’s Weekly or an appearance on the Today show. This personal experience book is for beginners as well as advanced writers and goes beyond mere self-help in the craft of writing.
The author’s studies in literature, writing, and behavioral sciences, as well as her teaching experience, combined with a lifetime of writing urges, present an abundance of practical ideas and insights on how to make the most of the call to write. She has dealt with writing urges for thirty-something years and is an expert at keepin’ on. In addition to revealing her own experience in the ups and downs of writing, she offers the reader generous amounts of humor and help. Yet, it is not a how-to book so much as a how-not-to book. It is a journey of looking at one’s creative wounds and realizing that most of them are self-inflicted. But all of them can be healed.
Gary Provost once advised in a Writer’s Digest article that, “If you want to become rich and famous, it’s not enough to write well. You have to write about things that huge numbers of people want to read about.”
Sex, Lies & Stories, Memoir of a Frustrated Writer, can be ordered from the publisher, CreateSpace.
Her articles have appeared in national publications, including Christian Science Monitor, Off Duty Magazine, Christian Herald, Sunday Digest, Lutheran Digest, and Busy Freelancer. Her photo and excerpts of her survival story from breast cancer appeared in Prevention Magazine. She has published in the Story Circle Journal and Story Circle Network.
The Noble Generation, Volume II: Stories of the American Experience, published by Barnes & Noble (November, 2004), includes her story, "The Love of Her Life," p. 228, a poignant account of her mother's first great love. The book is available at booksellers and online.
Jackie's story "Belonging Place" appears in an anthology, What Wildness is This: Women Write About the Southwest, edited by Susan Wittig Albert, et al. A significant anthology of writings by women, celebrating their experiences in the landscapes of the Southwest, this book was published by the University of Texas Press (March, 2007). This collection demonstrates and illuminates the rich diversity of environments of the Southwest, as well as the extraordinary range of women's voices and women's experiences of the land. The collection is made up of a variety of literary forms—memoir, creative non-fiction, essay, poetry—and includes pieces by both emerging and established writers. Jackie is both an emerging and established writer, but she is humbled and proud to be among the wonderful contributors/authors in this book. She says it is probably the closest she will ever get to her fifteen minutes of fame. Her story appears on page 205. The book is currently in bookstores and available from the University of Texas Press. It is also available from Story Circle Network .
The Sound of Windmills is her first novel and she has been writing it most of her life. It can be purchased online at CreateSpace. It is a story of survival, especially of the females in this fiction story set in the mythical town of Langor, Texas. These women strive to make it in a man’s world where educating females is generally considered a waste of time and money, and a woman is thought to be too delicate to work outside the home. Neither cowboys, rednecks, or wheeler-dealers, these are simple, country folks, who, like pathfinders of old, often lurch this way and that, fuzzy about their exact direction, but stubborn in their determination to reach their eventual goal. These soft-hard people know how to survive tough times. When their dreams die, they make new ones. They struggle with the need to have power and control over their lives and, lacking the proper role models, often err when they rely on what they’ve been told, rather than trust their own instincts. They grapple with their traditional world and eventually learn to say, each in her own way, what King Lear once declared: “I will do such things, what they are yet I know not, but they shall be the terrors of the earth.” Jackie has successfully recaptured those days when the windmill turned and creaked in the wind; when kids took castor oil for almost every ailment; and when people worked from sun to sun and went to town to do their trading on Saturday afternoon.
Jackie Woolley’s new book, Sex, Lies & Stories, Memoir of a Frustrated Writer, is dedicated to the millions of writers out there who have heard the call but never had the thrill of a twenty-city publicity tour, a review in Publisher’s Weekly or an appearance on the Today show. This personal experience book is for beginners as well as advanced writers and goes beyond mere self-help in the craft of writing.
The author’s studies in literature, writing, and behavioral sciences, as well as her teaching experience, combined with a lifetime of writing urges, present an abundance of practical ideas and insights on how to make the most of the call to write. She has dealt with writing urges for thirty-something years and is an expert at keepin’ on. In addition to revealing her own experience in the ups and downs of writing, she offers the reader generous amounts of humor and help. Yet, it is not a how-to book so much as a how-not-to book. It is a journey of looking at one’s creative wounds and realizing that most of them are self-inflicted. But all of them can be healed.
Gary Provost once advised in a Writer’s Digest article that, “If you want to become rich and famous, it’s not enough to write well. You have to write about things that huge numbers of people want to read about.”
Sex, Lies & Stories, Memoir of a Frustrated Writer, can be ordered from the publisher, CreateSpace.
Lake Livingston
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I was a young girl when I first started to write, but the stops and starts have taken their toll. It’s not that I don’t have some fair publishing credits. I’m just not the kind of writer I wanted to be. You know, the bestseller kind. What really galls me is the fact that the book store in my hometown has never carried my stuff. (Never mind the unstable psyche that thinks only those who knew me then can validate my life a success now.)
A few years ago, a significant age landmark was approaching , and I was sick with a serious bout of flu and bronchitis. I lay in bed that night, thinking I had spent my life helping others fulfill their dreams, hoping that one day it would be my turn. I am a professional in other areas, why not in writing? Suddenly, I knew clearly that if I didn't do something drastic, I would never finish what I really set out to do—be a serious writer. Horrified that I was stuck within shouting distance of my dream, I took the plunge. I had rarely spent a night alone, yet I proposed to my husband over coffee the next morning that I pack up everything and move to the lake. “I don’t need to quit my day job,” I said, referring to the office work I did for our small company. “I’ll become a telecommuter.” I redesigned my life as I talked: “I can set up a satellite office and send my work on the computer back to the office by modem.” He looked at me as if I’d announced I was going to don black leather and ride a Harley to the north shores of Newfoundland. He knows I am terrified of the dark woods, snakes, and things that screech in the night. I tend to have nightmares about chain saw murderers roaming the East Texas woods. Why did I want to deliberately isolate myself from Computer City and live where there is a tiny library, no Total Fitness, and no pizza delivery? Where a night on the town means eating at Catfish King? Where social events revolve around high school football games, the Pine Cone Festival, and the Crappiethon in Onalaska? I wanted to either purge myself of a lifetime of writing urges or quit and be done with it. I sought closure, something psychologists say the human mind naturally pursues. I decided to spend the next twelve moons on an internal trip, starting with the reasons I began to write in the first place, without any prejudice as to whether or not I will continue. It is not a journey to save the world, but to save myself. Serious as this sounds, I also hope to have a little fun along the way and make up for the sobriety of my youth. Last revised: January 2, 2017 |