Jack Willis

Author of Saving Jack (University of Oklahoma Press )

Read the review here. 

Please visit the author's website here.

When did you start writing?

When I first thought I could write, in sixth grade, the experience annihilated me. I thought I might never put pen to paper again. My girlfriend was gone, and my life was over, all because of what I wrote. Actually, the little beauty wasn’t mine at all. She barely knew I existed. The way I remember it, my English assignment was to write about a friend. I wrote about my best friend, and how he was cavorting around with the sixth-grader of my dreams, and how she was cavorting back. My story was funny. The class laughed. I laughed. The teacher laughed, for a few moments anyway. But my best friend wasn’t laughing. And the woman of my dreams, sitting on the front row, the cutest thing I’d ever seen, was crying. I’d embarrassed and humiliated her. I was devastated, but I knew then that my writing could evoke emotion. I never made it with the little beauty, though.

What did you like to read as a kid?

Jack London’s The Call of the Wild was my favorite. I loved the Hardy Boys series. After I’d read all I could find at the library, I tried Nancy Drew. Once. I don’t know what I expected, but not her. At the time, I didn’t know the same people were writing her too. I liked Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage. Mostly, I read comic books.

When you were growing up did you have books in your home?

My dad only finished the eighth grade. He educated himself, partly by reading National Geographic. He subscribed, read them, and saved every one of them. They filled two entire rows on the bookshelf. I should have read them, but I did enjoy the photography, especially the Ethiopian women. The Bible was in our home. In college, my journalism mentor said The Bible included some of the best writing in the world and some of the worst. I wanted to write as eloquently as some of the authors in that book.

When did you think about becoming a writer?

In eighth grade English, I won an essay-writing contest. The prize was a reporting position on my school newspaper. That was the beginning. Ultimately, I became editor of that paper and of my high school and college newspapers. I wanted to write for a living, become a journalist, and I did.

Was there someone who got you interested in writing?

My eighth grade English teacher, Evelyn Woods. I don’t remember my sixth grade teacher, except that she didn’t think much of my writing after the little beauty story. I was fortunate to have Mrs. Woods in junior high and then again as my high school journalism teacher. She nurtured me and made me believe I could write.

How do you write? Do you have a daily routine? What’s good about it? What do you hate about it?

I was a newspaper editor for twenty years and a journalism professor and student newspaper adviser for the last fifteen. My career meant everything. I wasn’t a very good multi-tasker. I wanted to write once I retired, but I just never retired. Then in 2005, cancer zonked me. I believe the disease was God’s way of telling me it was time for a change. A kick in the butt, if you will. The cancer scared me, and I retired in June 2007. Saving Jack, a story about a guy with breast cancer, was a natural for my first book. I write when I have something to say -- and when I don’t. My economics professor told me that I wrote a lot of words, but I didn’t say anything. I really didn’t have much to say about economics, but I believe that, over the years, my words have come to mean more.

I pick up my laptop for hours at a time during the day and most of the night. I write and revise. I write by sound. If my inner voice stumbles over the words, I change them. If I’m stumped, I read them aloud. I don’t have the inclination to work straight through from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Been there and done that. Writing is addictive for me. Once I get an idea, I can’t put down the computer. Some days, I write from nine in the morning until nine at night. Other days, I write a few hours and then spend time with my wife.

Any particular story to tell concerning the writing of this book?

This book launched a new career for me. When I was dealing with the mastectomy aftereffects and the chemotherapy, I kept a journal. I would wake up at three or four o’clock, wide awake. I got up and wrote. The early-morning chronicles turned into a book.

What’s some good advice that you’ve received concerning writing? What’s some advice that you could offer young writers?

Revise. Revise. Revise. Revision makes writing better. Trust me. Don’t sit staring at a blank computer screen. Type something -- anything. Then you have something to revise. Write like you’re talking to a friend. Read The Elements of Style by Strunk & White. Write, and then write some more.

How did you find the publisher for this book?

I drove down the street in Norman to the University of Oklahoma Press. I knew that OU Press focused on Southwest history, and Saving Jack was about cancer. I didn’t think the editors would read it. But the editor-in-chief, Chuck Rankin, liked the idea, the first book written by a man about his breast cancer.

I had bought a copy of Publishers, Editors & Literary Agents and I looked for publishers on the Internet. I contacted three literary agents and two publishers. I quickly learned what they meant when they said, “Your book isn’t really our genre.”

What has your experience as a publisher been like?

I worked in newspapers for thirty-five years. The newspaper came out the next morning. The book didn’t.

What are you working on at the moment?

I’ve given a completed manuscript of Sandra’s Way, a non-fiction about schizophrenia, to the publisher. My first wife was diagnosed at age 23. She lived with that hellish disease for twenty years, until she drowned. It’s a love story, and it shows how mental illness destroyed a beautiful person. Now, I’m trying fiction, a series called The Street Hawker. It’s about the adventures of a feisty newspaper reporter -- an ex-banker, twice divorced, and a single mom with a 13-year-old daughter. An editor, a former student of mine, is reading the first manuscript in the series. I’m a third of the way into the second manuscript.

What are you reading?

I just came back from the library: Donald Trump’s Think Big and Kick Ass in Business and Life, Michael Crichton’s Timeline, and Tom Clancy’s The Teeth of the Tiger.