That did become an issue for me. I let my family read my public entries. My mom has taken an active interest in LJ Idol though she's not a writer, just a supportive mom. She usually reads my stuff. I used to think she didn't, but she's mentioned things from my Idol entries before. My aunt reads now too since my mom bragged to her how awesome I am, and now my cousin and her fiancé signed up for LJ and are following me.

It make me censor myself. I had some wild experiences in high school and college that could fit the prompts, but I worry... Will they read it? So I don't write it. That's why I created an alt last season for SCI and while I dabbled in unique, gritty fiction... I wrote gritty nonfiction that I didn't tell my family about and I didn't tell them that was me either. It was fun. I'd consider doing it again, I just don't have the time to write one entry, much less two. Overall, it felt nice to not censor myself.

It's a fine line with sharing and also keeping parts of your life private. I'm still trying to find a way of mixing the two :)

Maybe a writing journal isn't such a bad idea.