During dinner, Mr Puffles told me that the blog of Petite Anglaise was based on a book.

I said, No. The book is based on the blog.

Then he said, Well. Your blog is based on her book.

No. It’s not.

Well, it’s inspired by her book.

To answer that. No, my blog is not not based on her book OR inspired by her book. But her book did inspire me to go back to writing in my blog. I’ve actually tried to write in a blog for several years hoping to keep a diary of sorts to record the antics and stories of our life for my children. Unfortunately, I’ve always found it difficult to generate content for my blog even though my children did enough strange and squirrely things on a daily basis that one would assume that I had plenty of fodder for my diary.

I think that my main problem was that I had difficulty in developing a style or way of translating those thoughts across the pages of an online blog. The very qualities of being online and accessible to eyes other than mine made it difficult for me to write freely because it no longer felt like a secretive letter or entry to myself where I could mumble out loud the thoughts of my mind. It seemed that it required more structure than that. I tried writing as if I was writing letters to my children or writing a note to myself, but they all seemed wrong. So, I let my blog sit unattended for some time.

Then, I happened to pick up this book at the library called Petite Anglaise. I had read the jacket before checking out and had assumed that I was picking up a bit of mommy-lit. I had recently finished Odd Mom Out as well as Mrs Perfect – both by Jane Porter and was looking for something else that was a fast and easy read. However, when I was driving around in the car and sharing my book booty to Mr Puffles, I saw that it said “Based on a True Story” on the cover and I AM a sucker for true stories. This book was actually based on this woman’s blog! Interesting! Of course, I was compelled to visit and read her blog as well!

The whole experience was fascinating because Petite Anglaise was well-written and fulfilled all that mommy lit promises with a little bit of sex, a little bit of drama, and a story detailing the ins and outs of life as a working wife and mother. But it was also a bit voyeuristic, because even though it read like a novel, it was really the actual recollections and thoughts of this young woman. I loved her writing style and the way she could turn a phrase. Perhaps it was her British voice with snippets of French tucked into it that made it so appealing, but whatever it was, I was hooked!

Later, reading her blog, I saw that her blog posts were similar in style and content as her book. That even as a blogger, she carefully crafted her posts as mini-essays to her “readers” even before she realized that she had any! Thus, she did inspire me to begin blogging again with both her style and content.

So, Scruples No Regrets was reborn out of the ashes of my previous blog.