I’m not a Catholic, but I am looking forward to the fish fries that are going to be available between now and the end of Lent. (I’m a freak for Captain D’s; I won’t deny it.) And as it is getting to be that time of year where we think about the areas of our lives we wish to improve upon, because no one is perfect, I have to confess: I am a terrible student.

I’m taking a class. Simple. 3 weeks; just email; you’re not getting a grade. It’s a course on secrets. Secrets we keep; why we keep secrets; repercussions of those secrets being revealed—the whole shebang. Yes, the class I had everyone vote on a couple weeks ago. I’m in it; and I’m enjoying it.

And now I’ve remembered I’m a terrible student.

Here are the reasons why:

1)    The homework actually makes me think hard about my characters, digging deep beneath some layers and revealing vulnerabilities. This is a problem because I like to think of myself as the sort of general who wouldn’t send his troops out to run over a hill he wasn’t willing to run over himself. And I’m not remotely willing to run over that fucking hill. My layers and vulnerabilities are going to continue to be buried and ignored and left alone—and I swear to God, if you try to hug me, I’ll rip off your arm and club you with it. So I’m trying to do homework and make my characters do things and discuss things I wouldn’t be do or discuss if you paid me. I feel like a hypocritical therapist. And it’s no good pointing out the characters don’t actually exist, because they do.

2)    Not only do I not like digging deep for vulnerabilities, I don’t like sharing them with the rest of the class. I couldn’t avoid it forever; the teacher was nagging. I settled down in my chair and figured out some secret stuff for Adam and the rest; I was most comfortable discussing Lucifer’s vulnerabilities. Finally satisfied with my results, at least to a degree, I realized I needed to post this to the rest of a class. A class of my peers, who I had only met by sending out a one-paragraph “hi-howdy-how-are-you” meet and greet. I don’t know these people. I don’t know their judgments or knee-jerk pet peeves. I might be sitting in a room of fundamentalists for all I knew and I was going to send out my characters’ vulnerabilities to these potential jackals? Not only am I a hypocritical therapist, I’m a horrible therapist, ratting out her clients to a bunch of strangers.

3)    My latent Hermione Granger gene. You know the gene I’m talking about. The one every hyper-excelling perfectionist has beating beneath her breastbone. I don’t want to be good in this class; I want to be the one who earned 103%. And I should be ashamed of myself. Scottish kings have been stabbed for less. And if Ron were here, he probably would.

Anyway, confession aside, our current assignment in the secrets class is identifying the reason why you’re keeping the secret. SHAME, PRIDE, FEAR OF PUNISHMENT or GUILT. And the class—aside from the reasons above—has been good for me. I think I’ve figured out some things about Adam and Eve, of their time before the divorce, that I didn’t know (or realized I knew) before. I realized that most of the secrets I ever have my characters keep are attributed to PRIDE. The pig-headed variety. And I don’t even care. I just laugh as I think about it because I can’t blame them. I would do the same thing if I were in their situation, which clearly isn’t news since I’m writing them and all.

Jenny Crusie wrote a blog a few weeks ago called the Tao of Bob, and one of the revelations that Bob made was that your therapist knows what’s wrong with you the first session you meet. But you end up going for two years because they can’t tell you what’s wrong with you—mainly because you’re going to be too pig-blind stubborn to believe them. You have to figure it out yourself. I know this to be true. My therapist operated this exact way; and I had my suspicions from the beginning she knew my dirty secrets, the dirty secrets I refused to share with myself or her. Even though she already knew them.

But there it is. The core hero and heroine I write in every story I scribble. They might have low self-esteem and neuroses out the wazoo, but by Golly, they have their Pride. And if we’re writing ourselves—not that any of us are blood-sucking warriors or demon-slayers—then clearly my writing therapy is all about not succumbing to the deadliest sin of all. Good thing it’s fiction because I am not nearly as optimistic that I can implement it in my own life nearly as well as my characters can.

Oh, well. At least there’s fish.

So line up for confession: what have you realized your writing reveals most about you? And have you ever taken a writing class that you really enjoyed? Does the thought that your deepest secrets will be revealed through your writing and realized by everyone who reads your work make you break out in a cold sweat? And how do you eat your fish: battered or breaded?

What with Lent upon us, I thought maybe we should focus on the things we should repent and do no more.

Much like the way to hell is paved with good intentions, so is the way to finishing your novel. You write up the character sketches, you answer numerous questions, and you even make a half-hearted attempt at an outline (i.e. plot.) But are you writing?

No.

You’re thinking about writing. You’re playing and practicing, but you’re not actually writing. You’re showing up for church and tossing your pennies into the collection plate, but the rest of the week, you’re drinking with the damned. (Because that’s what all writers do, of course, drink. It says so right at the very bottom of this blog with the rules.)

You circle and circle, and soon you find you’ve arrived at Hell. Welcome. Dante’s holding up that familiar sign of: Abandon all hope ye who enter here. He laughs as you point to your notebook with your notes and outlines and plans. It doesn’t matter. You’re fully fettered into Writer’s Hell, my friend, and one or more of these grievous sins is probably what landed you here.

Circle 1: Limbo. You landed here because you didn’t know any better. Not an excuse—you’re still in hell. Read up on craft and read up on your genre—and read up period. Reading will by virtue make you a better writer. You won’t be able to help yourself.

Circle 2: Lust. Your lack of commitment because everything looks like it’d be fun to write leaves you clacking about aimlessly. Saddle a horse and ride it already. A stable of thoroughbreds isn’t going to do you any good if you don’t ride one across the finish line once in a while.

Circle 3: Gluttony. You think you need more and more research books and websites and historical tidbits and facts. If you use 1/100^th of all the stuff you’ve researched, you’d have a tome to rival War and Peace. There is such thing as too much research. After a point, you’re doing it to avoid writing and we all know it.

Circle 4: Greed. Stop hoarding. Don’t save it for your next book—this book deserves all you have to give it, and frankly, you might not get a next book if you don’t make this one worth reading. And while you’re at it, help fellow writers around you. If you have a skill, share it. If you find something that was of use to you, share it with the community. The next Julie Garwood will remember you.

Circle 5: Anger & Sloth. Don’t hate them because they’re published; and don’t think writing is about eating bon-bons and substituting hair and eye color for the same old book. (All romances are the same, right? Wrong.) Writing is work; it’s why so few people actually do it. Stop being cranky and get off the couch and write it already.

Circle 6: Heresy. Don’t betray your reader’s trust. Don’t promise them a Happily Ever After, then kill off one of your protagonists or have them end up divorced, on welfare, selling their kids for crack. Sure, it probably exists in the world, but it’s not why the reader picked up your romance novel. Genre fiction makes a promise: the good guys get rewarded for their virtue; bad guys get their comeuppance; the puppy is saved from the burning building. Don’t betray the trust.

Circle 7: Suicides. This is the circle where self-destructive people live. What are the big sins here? Giving up, deleting your stories/chapters because you don’t like them, and trashing other writers to make yourself look better. Exactly what’s the benefit of doing any of these things?

Circle 8: Liars. Liar, liar, pants on fire. We’ve already established the reader trust. This one is: Don’t lie to yourself. It just starts a vicious circle. And lying to the editor you can finish something in X amount of time, when clearly you’ve never finished anything, not even pie, in that amount of time only gives you an overwhelming sense of failure—and leads you to the 7^th Circle. You run a marathon by training for it, not by just signing up to do it and showing up on race day.

Circle 9: Betrayers. Traitors still get executed. You’ll notice the trend about hating those who betray us, and in the deepest circle of writing hell resides those who betrayed us the deepest: those who sell out and write “jets of warmth pooled between her flaming thighs.” Seriously, the only reason the fire department will be coming to my house for this line is because I set that book on fire in my front yard! Shoot for some originality, guys. Don’t think just because a hundred books before you have jetting pools of warmth, you should do so too so you can get the big money. You might, by some miracle, get published, but it won’t get you respect. Don't give us the cliche--offer us something unique, something that touches us. Give us the Awe Factor. (You won't be doing that with "His eyes were glued to her nipples." So don't even bother with that one. Find something else.)

So what have you given up for Lent? I'm giving up circle 7 and circle 2. (I always have a problem with LUST. Damn.) Any circles that should be added to the list?