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?