A single word can flood your mind with memories or dreams or disappointments. It might give you a warm, happy feeling or it might fill you with dread and despair.

Hope. I’ve written about it here and here.
Regret. Choice. I’ve written about those here.

Oh, regret… you cruel, pointless bitch. I’ve got enough regret material to write a book. Unfortunately, it would be an autobiography. Okay, wow. Deep breath. Huge downer. I am not going to write about regret. Not tonight.

I’m also not going to write about choice… because fucked-up choices led to my mountain of regrets.

Not going to write about hope either. Not feeling it tonight.

Abundance? No. Seriously, I have made an abundance of poor choices born from false hope leading to much regret. Ha.

Secret. This is the word tonight. I have a secret. I have a lot of secrets. Real ones that no one knows – not my husband, not my mom, not my sisters, not my friends. No one. I have secrets about my past, my deepest feelings, my fantasies… secrets about sex and love and… Yeah. Secrets.

I’d better start small. I need to preserve the mystery. [Stop laughing.]

Secret writing.

Nearly all of my writing is secret from those who know me personally… in my real physical life. They have never read any of my fiction… or even this blog [to the best of my knowledge].

I have tried, a few times, to give my husband [just call him John] pieces of my fiction to read. But he’s not a reader of fiction. He reads nerd news and such. He wasn’t keen on reading my sexy little love stories. Which is unfortunate because I was hoping he would get some ideas from some of the hotter scenes. Kind of like a subtle instruction manual. [Another secret exposed: the real reason I wanted him to read my work…]

No one knows that I create secret Pinterest boards for my stories. I scour the internet for the perfect photos of my characters [how I envision them]. I pin them. And I pin photos of locations and random items from the story… anything that helps my little mind-movie roll on. When I need inspiration, I visit my secret boards and fall inside my story. And lose touch with reality. Which is my goal. You know, when writing. Not in general. Or maybe then, too.

And the blog… oh, John knows I write one, but he has never asked me what or where it is. The URL is right there on my Pinterest page, so I suppose it is possible he’s reading. But I don’t think he is. And I’m sure no one else [family, friends] has read this blog either. I prefer the stealthy approach. I have other secrets I will likely divulge here and, well, that could end poorly. Awkward.

That’s the tip of my secret iceberg. More to come. Probably.

–Posted for Writing 101: day 3