The one lesson I’ve learned from life
Jacqueline Wilson
Dame Jacqueline Wilson, 71, has published more than 100 books for children, including the Story Of tracy Beaker, now a BBC tV series. She was made Children’s Laureate in 2005. Divorced with a grown-up daughter, she lives in London.
DON’T LET SHYNESS HOLD YOU BACK
As A child, i was very shy. My mum was forever telling me to speak up and, of course, i went into my shell even more.
At school i loved English, but if you spoke up in class the ‘scary’ girls picked on you, so i shut up. i had to leave at 16 because my parents didn’t see any point in further education. My mum sent me to do a secretarial course.
When i finished i saw an advert in our local london paper for teenage writers — i had wanted to be a writer since i was six, and had finished one or two ‘novels’. immediately the negative thoughts flooded in. But i ignored them and talked to some people who were about to publish one of the first fullcolour teenage magazines.
They wanted romantic short stories. surprisingly — i didn’t normally say boo to a goose — i thought, i don’t really like romantic short stories, so instead i wrote a funny tale about a girl at a first dance. Wonderfully, they offered me a job — in dundee, miles away. i went to live in a girls’ hostel (almost as grim as it sounds), but i loved training to be a journalist. i learned to make decisions without caring what people thought.
The experience stood me in good stead for rejections later in life. i remember that awful thud of a rejected manuscript as it came through the letterbox, but eventually my first novel was accepted when my daughter was two.
it helped in my personal life, too. i got married in my teens and when my marriage broke up, rather abruptly in my 50s, i was very upset. But i remember saying through gritted teeth: ‘i’m going to get through this.’
i was a reasonably successful writer then, but the divorce was an extra spur.
so many women are like i was when i was young. They worry they’re not good enough. Whenever i give talks, i say: ‘All that can happen is they say “No” or “We don’t want that”.’ The most important thing is to seize the moment.