Teresa Whaley

I love to read. I mean it. I picked up Mills and Boon books at the age of ten and devoured them. From there I was reading trashy novels, and serious ones. Loved me some Tom Clancy and June Flaum Singer. Oh and Jackie Collins. I avoided the classics until I was introduced to Mr William Shakespeare in school. Romeo and Juliet and from there I read Shakespeare for fun! More books followed and so did an assertion that I was going to be a writer.
The problem being that people like me didn't write. We got jobs, looked after families, or in my case some cats, and remained firmly in the background of life. We didn't have grand adventures or great loves that could fuel passionate writing. 
In 1994 I retook my GCSE's, Maths, English and English Literature. The coursework was interesting and the assignments led me to discover Tennyson and poetry. I'd always been interested in poetry but now I began to try and write it. My first scribbles I showed my English Teacher. He said they were ok but not spectacular. I didn't mind this because it showed me the direction I wanted to take my writing in. I sent a few poems off to a publisher and one got accepted.
I wrote more poetry. Some of it good. Some of it really really bad. Some of it got accepted. Some of it remained in a dark folder hidden in a storage box in the corner of the room. It lurks there now full of bitter resentment and angst, waiting for the time that I will unknowingly set it loose on the world.
I was disheartened and questioned whether I was any good at any of this. Self doubt was always my best friend. Still, I kept sending a few things off, here and there. 
Despite this, I continue to write. To push myself. To put myself out there to risk rejection. It's not easy. It's the most difficult thing in the world. Especially with poetry. Yeah, you can jot a few lines that are funny or humorous and move on but mostly my poetry is from a place inside me that is very vulnerable and can easily be bruised.