So. Catherine Ryan Howard is my guru. My guru says ‘Oh for the love of fudge.’ Isn’t that retro and cool? Never had a guru before. I have become slavishly devoted to everything she says because she is going to teach me how to be more than ‘just a writer’. The problem is I don’t have good ideas like hers. I’m going crazy trying to find a good blog name never mind do all the rest.

The best I can come up with is Consuelo, Chocolated. It is clear plagiarism of Catherine, Caffeinated and not as smart or as humorous. Chocolated also reminds me of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which is not good. This means I’m the most unoriginal person on the planet. Why can I dream up  story after story but I can’t come up with a name for a Writer’s blog that is glittering with the smarts, never mind a bright tagline that is part of the whole cohesive trip… How do you compete with ‘Writer, Astronaut, Skinny’? I ask myself. ‘Writer, Ballerina, Straight hair’, is the best I can do. But it sounds lame because I’m copying Catherine.

I’ve been on first name terms with my guru for a while. Copying is not good. The problem is this whole marketing yourself thing is a bit like writing an unbelievable story about myself and that’s where it comes undone; the non-fiction of my existence doesn’t excite me. I like to make it all up; none of it must ever have existed before.

Catherine says all one has to is have a cohesive concept and stick to it – brand yourself in other words. So she does pink the whole hog, and normally this could be girlish and a bit mundane – but she has this very cool picture of a retro pink tea-cup (much prettier than a coffee mug) and super-retro pink typewriter and it’s practically irresistable. Right now a cohesive concept is eluding me. What is my unique angle? What do I have to share that anybody else might want to know about? Oh for the love of fudge…!