Dame Jacqueline Wilson: ‘Don’t worry if you start a story and don’t finish it’

WITH more than 100 books, various TV adaptations, and even a teen short story magazine named after her, Dame Jacqueline Wilson has played a vital role in nurturing a love of reading in young people since her first novel was published in 1969.

The author revealed her writing tricks – including feeding her cat at daybreak to ensure an hour back in bed of serious, undisturbed writing – and told a sell-out audience at the Hay Festival how decades after her first success, she still enjoys making up and telling tales for her loyal audience.

Jacqueline , 77, cast her mind back to her childhood and described how she set out on a career that includes creating the famous Tracey Beaker character, a young girl who lives in a children’s home and became a seminal TV series.

“I always loved reading, and I always wanted to write,” she said.

And she explained the influences she soaked up.

“I used to go to Woolworths – and for those of you who are too young to know what Woolworths is, think of a Pound Shop but much, much better,” she said. “There were lots of sweets – and I’ve always loved sweets – and there was also a toy counter. They sold little rubber dolls and I used to love buying them and keeping them in a little shoe box. I had these identical dolls, and I would play boarding schools and orphanages.

“Some of my books are about people who live in institutions – and the germs of these books were formed when I was playing with my dolls in a shoebox as a child.”

The much-lamented general store had another area that was particularly attractive, she explained. “The Woolworths stationery counter was my favourite,” she recalls. “I would look for the right notebook and the right pen.”

Their colourful selection attracted her eye.

“When I got an emerald green book – not just the usual red or blue notebooks – I thought I could write a whole story as long as my favourite books with real characters and exciting adventures. I’d scrunch myself up in an armchair and my dad would have sports on the radio. I was in a world of my own – a storm could be going on around me, I would be oblivious to everything.”

Offering advice, she recommended planning the story you want to open in advance – “make a beginning, middle and end” – but not to hold yourself back trying to get everything right.

“Don’t worry if you start a story and don’t finish it,” she added. “Just jump in and write – and if you get fed up with it, don’t worry. Just start another one.”

She explained that despite finishing her first novel aged 16, she worked a journalist for many years, writing short stories for the magazine, Jackie.

“Writers are not overnight successes and writing children’s books can be a hard struggle at first,” she admitted.

Her talent was such that the publishers, DC Thompson of Beano fame, eventually set up the Jacqueline Wilson magazine.

“It wasn’t about influencers or pop stars – it was about being creative, and it ran for 12 years,” she said. “Before I had my first book published I thought I would scratch a living writing for magazines.

“I would write 3,000 words each morning and I tried to make the stories as long as possible because I was being paid by the word.

“In the afternoons,I would turn to the novel I was writing.”

Today, it is a 5am start when her cat Jacob sits on her head and asks for his breakfast – and then it is back to bed for an hours undisturbed writing before her two dogs Molly and Jackson let her know it is time for a walk.