My Secret Diary Read online

  I had the determination. Then on 14 April I became more focused: 'I bought a WONDERFUL little book called 'Teach Yourself to Write' by Kathleen Betterton. It is wonderfully encouraging and has given me absolutely heaps of ideas.'

  I still have my copy of that little book now, well thumbed, with the cover in tatters. Kathleen Betterton says:

  No book can teach you how to write, much less how to succeed as a writer. It can teach you only how to teach yourself to write: the rest depends on you. Literary success springs from an unusual combination of originality, luck and industry – especially industry.

  I was an odd one out, a strange, shy, weird, imaginative girl who seemed to think differently from everyone else. Did that make me original? I was prepared to be ultra industrious. All right, I could hardly bear to open a school textbook and I was pretty hopeless at helping Biddy with the dusting and vacuuming – but I wrote for hour after hour in my notebooks and diaries.

  I wasn't so sure about the luck element though. It's the one thing you can't really control. You can do your best to make your own luck, keeping an eye on literary trends and always being one step ahead. You can force yourself to write an artful letter, make a phone call, approach the right person at a publishing party (though it's agony if you're shy like me). But it's still mostly a matter of luck whether you get your manuscript accepted or not, whether it wins awards and races up the bestseller charts.

  My biggest best-seller has been The Story of Tracy Beaker. It was a reasonably original idea to choose to write a story about a fierce little girl in a children's home, desperate to be fostered. I certainly worked hard at it. There was no problem with Tracy herself. She sprang to life the moment I made up her name. It was as if she'd seized my pen in her own hot little hand, determined to write her story her way, in her own voice.

  I needed to check my facts and find out about fostering. This is where the first piece of luck flashed forth. My friend Bryony works for the Fostering Network and has very successfully fostered children herself. I asked her if she had any pamphlets about the whole procedure. She gave me a handful, including a yellow booklet specially for children called My Book About Me. As soon as I opened it and saw: MY NAME IS . . . I AM . . . YEARS . . . MONTHS OLD. MY BIRTHDAY IS ON . . . my heart started thumping. This was the way to write my book. I imagined my fidgety, stroppy Tracy being sat down by an overly earnest social worker and told to start writing her life story in her special book. She'd start messing about almost at once, telling fibs, going off into little flights of fancy. She'd doodle little drawings all over the page too. I knew I wanted those drawings in the published book.

  I nervously asked my then editor, David Fickling, if I could have lots of black and white illustrations throughout the text. This was quite unusual in those days and I worried about it being an extra expense.

  David just beamed at me. 'An excellent idea, Jacky,' he said. 'I tell you what, I think I know exactly the right person.'

  That right person was Nick Sharratt, now my dear friend, who has illustrated every one of my books for nearly twenty years now, and provided each one with an imaginative, distinctive, colourful cover. I am sooooo lucky to have Nick as my artistic partner.

  I've written around ninety children's books now and people often ask me if I've ever thought of writing for adults. I did actually write five dark and depressing crime novels for adults long ago but I'm not the slightest bit tempted to write for adults now. I only ever want to write for children and teenagers.

  However, I didn't always feel that way. I read Kathleen Betterton's chapter on 'Writing for Children' and felt disheartened. Kathleen states dogmatically that 'the writer for children must not attempt subtlety of character in which good and evil are blended'. That was precisely what I found disappointing in many children's books. The children just didn't seem real. She suggests that children like to read fantasy or adventure or school stories. I hadn't especially enjoyed any of these genres. I decided the fault lay with me. I'd simply been a very weird child.

  I wrote in my diary:

  I have been reading Enid Blyton's autobiography again, but this time far more cynically. She doles out advice again and again to would-be writers – yet surely her books are not all that great. If I ever write I won't write for children. I can't understand how Enid Blyton can write all day, yet leave out everything about real life. Her families don't quarrel, her parents don't nag, her teenagers aren't interested in lipstick and boys, her children never listen to dirty stories or wet themselves, and she ignores babies and pregnancy and sex. Surely all these things must have some part in her life. I just don't see how she can go on about little Noddy and the Famous Five, etc., etc.

  9

  School

  I hated school. I didn't mind Latchmere, my primary school, but I couldn't bear my five years at Coombe County Secondary School for Girls. I've been back to Coombe quite a few times to give talks to the girls. I've even presented the prizes at the end of term. I've talked about my school days and I've been polite and tactful, because Coombe now is a very different school. It's warm and relaxed and all the girls (and now there are even boys in the sixth form) seem cheerful. They get excellent exam results and they're very sensitive to any girl with special needs. They tick every box and get ten out of ten, full marks for a fine school.

  Coombe way back in 1960 was a very different sort of school. All schools were different then. There were pointless rules, fierce regulations about uniform, a strict standard of behaviour. You were expected to conform. I've never been very good at that.

  I loathed most of the lessons too. I disliked PE most of all. Every Friday morning I'd wake up and stick my head out from under my eiderdown, straining my ears. What total joy if I heard rain pattering against the window! Friday was double hockey in our yellow shirts and green shorts – 'G-r-e-e-n and yellow, G-r-e-e-n and yellow, oh Mum be quick, I'm going to be sick, just lay me down to die,' we sang in the changing rooms.

  I had no idea how to play hockey. Miss French, the formidable new PE teacher, had told us the rules, but I'd never listened properly. I simply ran when she blew the whistle – away from the ball and the likely whacks from everyone else's hockey sticks. Then she'd blow the whistle again and shout, 'Jacqueline Aitken! What are you playing at?'

  I didn't want to play at anything. If it poured with rain, making the playing fields too muddy, we couldn't have double hockey. We had country dancing instead, and I adored any kind of dancing.

  Hockey was the worst torture, but netball was almost as bad, shivering on the court in the middle of winter, our bare legs beetroot red. I couldn't see the ball until it practically knocked my head off. One day it caught the side of my glasses and sent them skew-whiff, so I went around looking lopsided for weeks.

  The scariest ball of all was the hard little rounders ball. Miss French became fed up with me lurking way out on the edge of the pitch as a deep fielder. For one terrible term she insisted I man first post at every game. This was a key position. It was vital that you caught the ball to get the batter out. Miss French was such a sadist. She knew I couldn't catch the ball to save my life.

  'Come on, Jacqueline Aitken, wake up, watch that ball, catch it, catch it, catch it!' she screamed.

  I dropped it. I dropped it. I dropped it.

  The batting girl hared round second post, third post and was home with a rounder before I'd stopped fumbling. Then Miss French would scream some more, and the other girls on my team would yell at me too. I'd stand there, trying to hold my head high, acting like I couldn't care tuppence whether I caught the stupid ball or not – but I'd be trembling, sometimes dangerously near tears.

  Then there was gym. For some inexplicable reason we weren't allowed to wear our green shorts and plimsolls in the gymnasium. We had to run round in our bare feet in just our ugly yellow blouses and our grim grey knickers. We were all shapes and sizes – fat, skinny, wobbly, hairy – so this was bad enough. But in those long-ago days none of us yet used tampons when we had