The truth about Diary of an Honest Naturalista

To answer the nagging question on everyone's minds.

Is Anna real? Yes and no. Anna is a Pseudo character. This means she doesn't actually exist as a whole person, but a combination of everyone. This means I take different naturalistas, and combine them all to form Anna. Anna can be me today, Berry tomorrow, Tomi next week. You get. So even though she doesn't exist, she is not fictional. I was really surprised the first time someone talked to Anna like she was a real person writing on this blog. When people comment giving Anna advices, I take it as a real compliment, cos even though she does not exist, she connects with her readers on so many levels. Some other characters that have been featured on this diary are fictional, while some are real. For example, Sade is also Pseudo. I remember one of the diary readers contacting me, and saying "Aunty Lola, am I Sade?" I wanted to burst into laughter. I responded say "You were Sade two weeks ago, but you are not Sade this week."

Are the stories real? About 70% of the story lines are non-fictional. This means they happened to different naturalistas. The settings and themes are completely fictional, but almost all the time, the event actually took place, in other settings. The other 30% of the stories are things that could happen to any naturalista.

How did it start? It is a long story, but the summary is that a former member of the AN team put up a short post one day, and titled it 'Hair Diaries'. I contacted her asking about her intentions. I told her "the only way you can run a diary on this blog is if you can be consistent with it," cos diary columns have a way of gathering a following after a while, especially if they are very real and interesting. I gave her two titles to pick from, and she settled for 'Diary of an Honest Naturalista'. This is because we wanted to be real and honest as possible. We wanted to write from the angle of the average naturalista, who is not a guru, but still manages to trudge along in this hair journey. After about four entries, for some reason, she couldn't continue on this blog. At first, I wanted to look for another blogger to join the team, to take care of the diaries, but changed my mind since I have some experience writing diary columns, so with much frustration, I had to take over from where she left off.

Did I know it would go this far? OF COURSE. In fact, this diary would go veryyyyyy faaaaarrrrr. You can quote me on that. I am a writer, and I kinda have an idea how stuff like this plays out.  Why do I think so?  Because it is periodic and it is consistent. The growth might be slow, but it is steady. This is one of the reasons I decided to take on the heavy task of continuing the diary, because I am thinking of the future value it will bring to us all.

I don't know why, but I for sometime, I have just been feeling a need to do this explanation. The funniest thing is that tomorrow, people will still love Anna and connect with her like she is this real and interesting naturalista that can connect to us all.

In the mean time, I love Anna. Do you?

Question of the Day

Which of these diary entries do you think actually happened to a naturalista

1. The beauty pageant edition
2. The Custard exchange edition
3. The grey hair edition

In case you have forgotten the storyline in these three editions, or you haven't read them before, just click each of them to familiarise yourself.

The first person to answer this question correctly will win a N500 recharge card on any Nigerian network. Add your email address below your comment.

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