Last week Miss M’s report came home, and as I’d been led to expect by the lady herself, shows she’s been having some difficulty adjusting to senior school this year - which I think mainly comes down to confidence. Ironic for a girl so confident and outgoing in every other facet of life. Last year, her final grade two report showed her reading was a year ahead of expectation, but now, she ain’t loving it so much. My family are all avid readers and members of her father’s family were librarians, so I guess it’s genetic she’d be into it. But since she’s been in grade three, she’s declared reading “boring”.

It seems chapter books aren’t holding her interest, so earlier this week I took her shopping for some suitable books. She told me she wanted mysteries, but unfortunately, the only ones I could find were for older children, and full of tightly packed print - immediate rejection. Even when I offered to read them to her. I was considering Enid Blyton books like “Famous Five” or “Secret Seven”, but for a thoroughly modern young woman, decided there’d be too much explanation, which would again, lead to pesky old rejection.

I thumbed through a couple of the groovier looking aimed-at-teenagers mysteries and thought “I used to be a writer, I could probably write something like this”. At first it was an aimless thought, then I really thought about it, and my brain totally kicked in and I decided I would write a book for Miss M, about her friends and school. I decided to call on all my knowledge of countless Scooby Doo episodes, and create something fabulous, but kitschy. The only problem was the plot … as in what would it be?

Perhaps ironically, as I was searching through my underwear drawer this afternoon, the whole thing unfolded itself in front of my eyes - no, not the underwear. The plot, silly. So my aim is to write a page a day, and give it to Miss M in the evenings to read. Of course, the heroine will have to be as sharp as a tack and gorgeous as she is in real life - I’ll have to call on every writing skill I possess! As research, we’re going to go and see Nancy Drew tomorrow night. I think I’m more excited than my small counterpart is.

I asked Miss M what the title of the book should be and she said “The Haunted School, starring me!”. I love the haunted school idea, and only partly because it fits so well with my Scooby Doo fantasy. So let’s see if this notion lasts longer than my domestic frenzy of recent weeks, which came to a grinding halt earlier this week. I did do the washing up today, so now it almost looks like I never lost my mojo. Almost.

Today I’m loving: being able to retrieve my site from a scary upgrade gone bad scenario - and tomato and roasted fennel soup