I am indecisive at the best of times (or maybe I’m not), so choosing a name for my blog was an interesting exercise. I wanted something original, something excruciatingly clever, something that would dazzle people with its brilliance, something that would perfectly sum up the essence of my writing and my personality, all in a few letters.

Yes, since you ask, I do believe in miracles. (So do The Ramones, incidentally, but that’s a whole other story.)

I set about scribbling potential names on numerous bits of paper. I left them littered around the house like fortune cookie confetti. I strode from room to room armed with a pen and a slightly wild expression, shedding white bits of paper like literary dandruff. I drove my partner crazy by popping out of doorways and dark corners just as he was dozing off/in the toilet/on the phone, offering excited ejections: “Bellword! Get it? Bellbird, but change the bird to word!” “Belloftheballpoint!” “Bellpoint!” “Triciawriter!” (This last one in a particularly unimaginative moment. I think I had just been wiping my daughter’s bottom.)

His only contribution was unprintable. Made him laugh until he nearly wet his pants though.

I took a pen and paper to bed and decided to sleep on it. (Not the pen and paper. They were for possible midnight scribbling. There’s nothing worse than thinking of your Next Brilliant Idea at 2am and forgetting it by breakfast because you haven’t written it down.) But it wasn’t until I was in the shower the next morning, my daughter demanding that I get out immediately to find her a box for her Strawberry Shortcake dolls – yes, true greatness is sometimes stumbled upon amongst the prosaic – that it came to me.

Half-naked, I dashed downstairs, turned on the computer and typed a phrase into that wonderful partner in crime, Wikipedia. Even this early in the morning, she was on to it: “Literally, belles-lettres is a French phrase meaning “beautiful” or “fine” writing. In this sense, therefore, it includes all literary works — especially fiction, poetry, drama, or essays — valued for their aesthetic qualities and originality of style and tone.”

I speak fluent French. You know my last name. The above description is exactly how I would love to write (although I would add the word humour in there somewhere as well).

So here I am.

belllettres.

And if you don’t get it, follow me anyway (the button’s just over there, on the right).