Q&A with Frank Warren, Creator of PostSecret.com

Over 175,000 Americans have divulged their secrets to the same man, albeit anonymously. Frank Warren is the creator of the community art project PostSecret, and with multiple on-line awards has turned it into one of the top blogs in the world. Guarding these daring confessions and archiving them into three best-selling books, Frank has unveiled his fourth collection, the most ambitious to date, A Lifetime of Secrets. During our conversation, Frank got candid about his process, where the project has taken him, and what the future might hold for the little blog that could.

Q: PostSecret was the little community art project that could and it's taken you from a start-up blog to being one of Forbes 25 Most Influential People on the Internet. How has PostSecret changed your life?

A: It's completely turned my life upside down, but in a good way. It feels like such a privilege to be on this journey and it's an adventure every day. It's completely unlike what my life was four years ago. I think that's the power of the web. I think that new communication technologies like blogs and virtual communities are gonna make even more prospects like PostSecret possible in the future for entrepreneurs and artists to discover parts of our humanity and poetry and humor and share them in exciting ways that make us all feel more connected.

Q: Did you ever think PostSecret would be this big back when you started it?

A: Well the PostSecret blog just got is hundred-millionth hint two weeks ago. When I started the project I knew it would be something very special and wonderful for me. I knew I'd appreciate it and find value in it. But I have been shocked by how it's resonated with people around the world. I'm just thrilled that the people also see kind of the humanity of the project. I think there's a lot humor, you know there's sexual secrets, there's shocking secrets. I think underneath all of these very individualistic secrets are these core emotions that more than anything else make us feel less alone with our secrets and more connected to people.

Q: What inspired you to take it a step further from the blog and create the four books?

A: The blog I like to think of the secrets I'm sharing as living secrets, secrets that when you see it on the blog...you know somebody's carrying that secret in real time. In the book form, I think of that more as an archive of secrets. I can share at times more secrets than I can on the blog and I like to think of the book as a story, a story about us as told through our secrets. My hope is that it's a hopeful story.

Q: Has it been hard for you to choose the different themes of each book? Each one has a specific guiding theme, the latest being secrets that span someone's lifetime.

A: What I've tried to do is share the secrets in each book through a different blend or from a different perspective. In the latest book, A Lifetime of Secrets, I've assembled a collection of hundreds of never before seen postcards, artfully decorated postcards from people as young as 8 to as old as 80. I've tried to arrange those secrets in loose chronological order to reveal the fascinating ways our secrets change and grow as we move through different stages of our lives, but also to show the surprising ways that our secrets can remain exactly the same no matter how old we are.

Q: Have you ever included one of your own secrets in either a book or on the website?

A: I have. There's one of my secrets in every book.

Q: I know you speak at a lot of colleges and recently gave a key not address at a conference for student activities. Have you had any interesting encounters with fans?

A: My favorite part of the project besides receiving the postcards every day is traveling to college campuses and meeting young people. I do have very interesting encounters. People will tell me how seeing a secret they might have been struggling with on a stranger's postcard really created an epiphany for them. Other times the encounters are extraordinary. A week ago I was at a book signing and somebody approached me and handed me an envelope and said "Thank you for putting my secret in the latest book." And I said, "Is it in this envelope? Can I open it" He said, "You can open it but not while I'm still around." [Laughs] As soon as I got back to my hotel room, I opened the envelope and inside was a copy of the secret...it had a picture of a very pregnant woman's stomach and the secret said "In 1963 I made love to your mother on my bed. I hope your life is happy and you're doing well." I'm paraphrasing the secret, it's in the book written more poetically than I could repeat it.

Q: Have you ever felt responsible for being told these secrets? Are you ever overwhelmed with the amount of information you're receiving?

A: The secrets are submitted to me on artfully decorated postcards and they're sent anonymously. In a lot of cases, it's impossible for me to reach out and help. There are some secrets that do contain painful details and for those, I think there's a natural urge to want to help out in some way. What I try to do is handle those feelings in supporting 1-800-SUICIDE, which is a national suicide prevention hotline I volunteer for, and I'm happy to say that in the last three years in addition to raising awareness of the hotline on the website we've also raised over $100,000 to support that noble charity.

Q: How do you choose the postcards you update each week? I know there are avid fans who wait and wait for those updates every Sunday.

A: [Laughs] Don't tell me that because I always feel so guilty when something happens and I can't post until Sunday afternoon. I feel like I'm depriving people of sleep across the country. I like to select secrets that surprise me, that I haven't seen before. I also like to pick postcards that express a common secret in a new or creative way. Every Sunday I've always also create a composition of secrets that contains all different emotions. So every Sunday there are going to be funny secrets, sexual secrets, shocking secrets, hopeful secrets, sorrowful secrets, and I try and connect them in ways where the secrets don't just speak to you the viewer but they almost have conversations among themselves, if that makes sense.

Q: PostSecret started as this small blog that grew with word of mouth. Now you have the PostSecret Community on-line that just launched recently, and now there's video and audio content being shared. Where do you see the project going in the future?

A: I try not to really set goals for the project. I try to be sensitive to where it leads me. Even though I try to experiment in trying new things with the blog and the website and the collection of secrets itself, I know that it's important that every decision I make preserves the integrity of the project and also maintains the trust that so many strangers have shared with me. I talk all of that very seriously and don't want to do anything to kind of mess up this project that is so special to me.

Q: With PostSecret still going so strong, how many postcards on average do you receive at your house?

A: I get between 100 and 200 a day, which turns out to be about 1,000 a week.

Q: How do you sort through all of those?

A: Well, I've gotten pretty good at going through the postcards. It's funny, I received 175,000 of them from all over the world and everyday I still get excited like a kid on Christmas morning when I go to my mailbox. I take two stacks of postcards out of my mailbox and it takes me about an hour and a half to go through them for the day. At the end of the week on Saturday I have about 200 or so that I've sat on the side for the website. I select through those for the website late Saturday night and arrange them on a coffee table I have down in my basement. When I do I almost feel like a film editor, taking these different scenes from people's lives and knitting them together in a cohesive way where they kind of connect and tell a story...or at least a chapter.