Author: Kelly Owens

Stressed! Such an overused and cop-out word, but that is definitely what I’m feeling. It’s blizzard-ing. I can’t get out and I have no supplies.

How do I possibly put this together? I think part of it is in the nature of my topic. Literally what is a secret. AND how can I narrow down such a large, personal idea. I’m writing this blog post in somewhat of a panic, because I’m quickly realizing that people aren’t going to want to tell me, a stranger, their biggest secrets. This was the original idea, to get people to talk to me about their secrets and what came of their situation. But they’re not going to say it to me. I mean who even am I?  A crazy girl on the street asking for people to tell me something they’ve never told anyone.

Thanks to Mollie and Christina, however, I’ve come up with a different idea. Instead of making podcasts that are just one person, and asking them about their secrets, I’ll collect secrets anonymously. Then, I’ll have other people read the secrets and record them. I’ll compile the secrets into podcasts with around 15 per podcast, and then pick out a theme. I still plan to interview people about secrets and get some stories from those who are willing to share, but my original plan is simply not realistic.

I’m wondering if anyone has any other ideas for podcasts that I can make? Or if I can somehow still do my original idea? So far I’ve only interviewed my friends, and I had a hard time getting anything out of them. Granted, I think it might be harder for me to get secrets from people I know than from strangers, but maybe I should just be giving it another shot? SOS. Still snowing.

Let me know if you have any other idea! (Please) Thanks friends. You rock. Never change.

Honestly, what am I not worried about, amiright?

I’m feeling pretty excited about my topic. I think the overall theme of “secrets” is going to be absolutely fascinating to research. My project will involve plenty of audio editing and interviewing which I’m actually quite comfortable with. For so many of my communications classes I’ve had to interview people and turn them into podcasts with sound effects and music, plus I’ve done a lot of music editing for my dance team, so I’m looking forward to that. Although I’ll be honest I’m not sure how long to make them, but that’s a minor detail. Same with photographs: I’ve had plenty of experience taking and editing photos (although I’m certainly no expert) so I think that part will be fun and interesting.

I’m most nervous I think about what it (my project) will actually turn into. In my production plan, I talked a lot about a ~website~ I’ll be making which will house all of my podcast and photos, but what does that even mean? Aesthetically and content-wise, I think I’m just going to have to kind of figure it out as I go, which of course makes me a complete wreck considering the size of this project. I know everyone is worried about that, so I’ll also say I’m worried about the research of my project. How much information on the psychology of secrets is too much? Is just discussing historical and famous examples of secrets interesting? What can I do to make it more interesting?

So many questions! I guess I’ll just have to try some things out and see how it goes.

If we’re being completely honest, I’m still struggling with the focus of my project. This is not the best place to be with the production plan being due Thursday, but alas, here I am. Once again, with complete transparency, I usually have no idea what I’m writing until I’m in the middle of writing it. Take this blog post, for example: I’m just typing. For any formal assignment, I’ll go back and delete all of the crazy things that fly off of my fingertips, but if I’m allowed any freedom at all, odds are I’ll leave it.

For my English 325 class, “The Art of the Essay,” this method has worked relatively well. It’s creative nonfiction; tell a story about yourself, talk about how you were feeling, reflect on it. This kind of thing, based on how I write, comes naturally. I word vomit. I make a nice little story. It comes full circle. “I did this, this happened, I learned this, now I am forever changed.” It makes sense because this is what people like to read. There is an art to this, so the course title, too, makes sense. In any case, this kind of writing is familiar to me. It allows me to write how I like to write.

This style of writing has not been working for my capstone project. Of that, I’m sure. For my pre-production plan and production plan, I allowed the words to fire off onto my keyboard rapidly. I went back and did a little editing, but I wasn’t worried about narrowing my focus at that point. In fact, I wasn’t worried at all, so I just kind of let everything happen. I rattled off a list of questions I wanted to answer and then I turned that into something I thought I could make happen. But you can’t just word vomit a capstone project, or so I’m finding out.

And so begins the production plan. My topic, which is “secrets,” definitely allows for plenty of creative nonfiction writing, but it has to be so much more thought out than other assignments. You might thing, “obviously, Kelly, you work on it all semester you better think it through,” but my ability to translate the words that fly across my brain into words on a page has worked for many large assignments before. So what makes this one different? When I go back to edit the word vomit, I can’t find a concrete theme, which is a problem. So my process for this project is to write as much as I possibly can until I can find a small portion to grasp onto and turn into something significant. Fingers crossed!

Since originally coming up with the “secrets” idea, my project has changed quite a bit. That is most likely due to the fact that I had zero idea of what I wanted to do with “secrets” when this all began, and now I sort of have a concept for what I want my project to look like. Hey that’s progress, right?

At any rate, while trying to decide what tangible “thing” I wanted to create by the end of the semester, a lot of issues came up. How was I going to make this different than PostSecret? Was it starting to resemble Humans of New York? How could I make this my own, and not a worse version of something that already exists?

When I landed on the idea of mini podcasts – many thanks to my peer review group! – I got pretty excited. I definitely had some things to work through: would other people be able to post, or just me? Is it just podcasts, or can I include other mediums (photos, text, etc.)? Content wise, I also had to work out a few kinks. Sure, secrets are interesting inherently, but I want to look at the consequences of keeping secrets. How does keeping someone’s secret affect the secret-keeper? I’ve been narrowing my scope in order to make this different from other sites. The psychology behind secrets has become the focal point as I move forward with the project, due to many hours of self and peer questioning.

For those of you who don’t know me from the gateway course, I am the girl who claimed she wasn’t interested in anything. For those of you who do know me, you know that this is not true. When first discussing this project, a predictable topic came to me very quickly: dance. I have been a dancer since I was six years old and still continue to do so – quite vigorously – here at Michigan.

I’ve done countless projects on dance at this point in my college career, whether these be in my gateway course or in my Communications classes, and I’m even enrolled in Dance 100 this semester (senior year, amiright?). Considering this fact, I decided it was time to try out something new. I want to challenge myself this semester and think outside of the box. That said, I can say that I didn’t want to get too crazy or too out of my comfort zone because I still want to focus on something I’m interested in and can stand to study for the next three and half months.

What has always been of interest to me are the things that people are the least willing to share: secrets. I love secrets. In a more general sense, I just really love people, so the more I know about a person the more excited I am. I need to know everyone’s business all the time. Coincidentally, I’ve somehow managed to become a “trustworthy” person (as told to me by those around me *insert hair flip*) so people love to tell me their secrets. It works out wonderfully. An avid reader of Post Secret, I look forward to Sunday mornings when the next round of secrets have been posted. I haven’t missed a single post since junior year of high school. What I want to do with this project is learn more about secrets. How are they projected? What constitutes a “secret”? How do people value or measure secrets? Who do people tell their secrets to, and why do they chose to do this? Do some people do the unthinkable and actually KEEP their secrets? Is there anyone who actually doesn’t have any secrets?

How exactly to turn this into a project is escaping me in this moment. I am obsessed with creative non-fiction, and I think this project lends itself to that style of writing. I’m unsure of what direction to take or how to give it a unique spin so that this is something that only I have done (ideas welcome). I definitely want to interview people (of all different ages), do some research, and write from personal experience. I’d also really like to do audio and work with podcasts because I think significant anonymity can come with only using a voice, but it also gives just enough of a hint to who the person is that will keep you hooked.

Discipline: Psychology, creative non-fiction, creative writing, sociology

Focal object: Secrets, regrets, individual people

Confounding variable: Age (is this interesting enough?). Does someone’s age affect how they view a secret, or is it more about something else? How do secrets and definitions of secrets change with age?