Denecia Green – life lessons

DENECIA Green has always had a love for the medical field, but along the journey she developed a passion for writing and has been using it to impart life lessons.

The 27-year-old shared with All Woman that although she is a pharmacist by profession, she enjoys entertaining people with words, and her love for writing cannot be tamed.

“This love for writing started in primary school when I would often write poetry, but it was not until high school when I was introduced to creative writing and found I had a knack for it that this passion really came forth. Acting on the encouragement of my English teacher, I began documenting my writing in a book before she encouraged me to submit my stories to the then Teen Herald, and each week they were published. I remember people always told me that the distinction was that there were always lessons to be learnt and the pieces weren’t just for entertainment,” the Camperdown High past student said.

This devotion to writing and submitting her articles on a regular basis eventually led Green to secure a weekly column with Teen Herald at age 14, after which she did a stint with Xtra News Jamaica writing the erotic True Confessions column before working with the Portmore Sun and Buzz Caribbean Lifestyle Magazine.

Then came her first novel — Life Through a Teen’s Eyes, released in 2012 – which was aimed at helping teens get through the challenges of adolescence.

Green explained that her motivation came from the frequent cases of teen pregnancy and suicide around her, plus the defeatist mindset of people she interacted with who believed they could not excel in certain areas.

“I knew that teens needed guidance and they tend to react better when you tell them things in a manner they can relate to. The purpose was to inspire and guide young people on how to get through the doldrums of their teen years,” she said.

But Green also developed an appetite for a different type of literature which stemmed from her erotic stories at X-News and Buzz.

And so, two years after her first novel, she published Lies, Sex & Betrayal which was a raunchy sex novel about two women taking two completely different routes with how they selected and satisfied their men. This, Green says, shows two different ways a woman can view money as the primary factor in life, and also illustrates that it doesn’t necessarily result in happiness.

The spin-off, Love Lies & Temptation, published earlier this year, depicts how easy it is to lose focus of a particular goal, even when you are on the correct path, and that major sacrifices have to be made in life to truly have what is best for you.

Her books are available in Fontana Pharmacy, Aura Vibe, UWI Bookshop, Orridge Pharmacy and Amazon.

She also hopes to take the inspirational route, sharing that she has someone’s story and is hoping for permission to tell it, while hinting at a possible autobiography in the future.

Further, Green also started a scholarship fund at Camperdown High some years ago which awarded $25,000 to a grade 10 student in the Arts — English, Literature and Spanish — to help with tuition and books.

While aspiring to be a best-selling author, Green loves going to the beach, enjoys working with young people, giving motivational talks, and engaging in community projects.

For her, it’s simply capitalising on her youthfulness, as the impact on young people is greater when it comes from another young person.