Wanna hear a secret?
Who doesn’t love a good secret? They’re the fuel for many friendships, relationships and love affairs, not to mention novels. I asked the author Dianne Dixon to share her thoughts on the power of secrets in a blog post for me. Her novel “The Language of Secrets” releases today. In her words, here is “The Truth About Secerets.”
by Dianne Dixon, author of The Language of Secrets
“Want to hear a secret?”
The question is usually asked in a whisper and, often, in proximity so intimate that we can feel the questioner’s breath, warm and soft, on our ear. And it sparks the same tingling anticipation in us that we felt in childhood: it brings back that playground thrill: the possibility of hearing something forbidden, or exciting or—perhaps—just a little bit naughty.
As adults, we’ve come to know that secrets are the hiding places for the parts of our lives where we’re dangerous, deviant, or too full of desire. Secrets are the lockboxes in which we store our vulnerabilities, our shame, our compulsions, and the uneasy knowledge of the things we’ve done when we thought no one else was looking.
Our fascination with secrets is instinctive; we’re drawn to them like magnets—especially when they belong to someone else. There’s an excitement in catching a glimpse of other human beings in the act of colliding with their secrets. It doesn’t matter whether these people are old or young, famous or faceless. We’re as mesmerized by the tale of Tiger Woods and his avalanche of mistresses as we are by the little old lady down the block who dies with fifty cats on her bed and two million dollars squirreled away in her attic.
From earliest childhood, we sense that secrets are where intrigue waits; where the unexpected lurks, where explosions can be found.
Then, after we’ve grown up, we learn something new about secrets: we find out the strange things people will do to protect them—things that are terrifying in their stupidity, or their courage, or their self-destructiveness: acts that be unspeakably evil; or, wordlessly heartbreaking.
This is the reason so many writers (including me) tell stories about secrets. Secrets are where all the emotional dynamite is packed.
–Thanks, Dianne!
