Thursday 12 July 2007

Introduction to Zinnia

Hi everyone, I've just got around to writing my introduction, sorry it's late. Here goes: I am a humanist funeral celebrant. I hear so many wonderful stories through my work that I began a blog in July 2004 to share some of them. The blog quickly became popular, with several mentions in the Guardian and a place in the Bloggie shortlist for 'best written blog 2005'. This was all a big surprise and a bit overwhelming. I decided to scale down my blog, partly because I didn't want the pressure of belonging to the blogerati and partly because I got bored with only writing funeral stories. At the same time, largely as a result of the encouragement of my lovely commenters, I started to write a novel. It is, of course, about a humanist funeral celebrant. I had positive and helpful feedback on the second draft a couple of months ago. I am now working on the third draft and right now I'm finding it really difficult, but I'm also learning a lot in the process and I can see that the book is improving immensely. And I love the novel racers!!!

4 comments:

Fiona Mackenzie. Writer said...

Hi Zinnia

Well done for having the discipline to do a third draft. I remember reading somewhere that if writers put as much effort into their editing as in to their writing, they'd have much more chance of being published. But it does sound such hard work!
Tried to read your draft but it seemed to start with the ending. Is there a clever way I can find the beginning or do I just scroll down?

Fiona (very new to blogging...and common sense)

Zinnia Cyclamen said...

Hi Fiona, and thank you. It is hard work indeed... the feedback I got on my second draft indicated that it would probably be publishable with a bit of a tidy-up, or it could be a much better book with a significant redraft. It was my choice. I want to write the best book I can - so I chose the significant redraft. And although it's really tough, I haven't regretted that for a moment.

Sorry but because of the way blogs are constructed - newest post first - you do have to scroll down to the beginning and read the posts in reverse order. But at least, if you access them through the 'first draft' label, you weed out all the memes, the 'oops sorry no post today' posts, the requests for information and other extraneous bloggery! I feel quite embarrassed about people reading my first draft now, because the second draft is so much better - and the third will be better still - but it feels important to leave it up there, somehow.

hesitant scribe said...

You are very brave posting a draft at all! As for 3rd draft - I'm struggling to do 1st draft! Usually for short stories I do about 7 drafts. Eek.

BUT am here to say YAY - you introduced yourself at last! Hurrah!

And I love the novel racers too ;-)

Jen said...

We love you too!