Deciding What to Keep Private on Your Personal Blog

You have written a post you rather like. It is funny and honest, and it is about the week your sister moved back home. Your finger is hovering over the publish button, and a small voice is asking whether she would mind.

Most people who keep a personal blog meet that small voice sooner or later. It does not mean you are oversharing, and it does not mean you should stop writing about your life. It means you have reached a decision only you can make, and that decision gets much easier with a few simple habits to lean on. Here are the ones we would pass along, with a mug of something warm.

Think of your blog as a front room

When friends come round, you show them into the front room. They see your books, your slightly wonky shelf and the photo of the dog. They feel welcome, and they get a real sense of who you are. Nobody thinks you are being cagey because you did not also walk them through your bank statements and your bedroom drawers.

A personal blog can work in just the same way. Private does not mean dishonest, and warm does not mean telling everything. Readers come for your way of seeing things, your small discoveries and your sense of humour, and you can give them all of that with plenty of doors left closed.

There is one big difference, though. You choose who comes into your front room, and you do not choose who reads a public blog. Your neighbour, your manager and a total stranger all get the same view, so picture them on the sofa before you decide what to leave out.

What to keep behind a closed door

Some things are worth keeping back as a matter of routine, however friendly your readers seem. You do not need to agonise over these.

• Where you can be found. Your home address, your street, your children’s school and the café you visit every Saturday at nine.
• When you are away. Holiday posts are a joy, and they are just as good written after you get home.
• Anything that could unlock an account. Your date of birth, your mother’s maiden name and your first pet’s name are all common answers to security questions.
• Money and paperwork. Account details, tickets with barcodes, and photos of letters or ID cards.
• Work matters. Anything confidential, and any complaint about a named colleague that you would not say to their face.

Keep an eye out for the jigsaw, too. Each detail can be harmless by itself, but a town, a favourite dog-walking route and a photo of your front door can add up to more than you meant to share. Every so often, read a few of your posts in a row the way a stranger would. Check your photos as well, since house numbers, post on the doormat and school badges love to hide in the background.

Other people’s stories are only partly yours

This is where most of the hard decisions live. Our house rules ask everyone to “share only what’s yours to share”, and posting someone’s private details, such as their address or private messages, without their say-so is firmly off the table.

Stories are trickier than addresses. The chaos of your sister moving back in is partly your story. The reason she moved back is hers. When a post touches someone else’s life, the kindest and simplest thing is to ask them, and it works best if you show them the actual words:

I have written a little post about last week and you are in it. Could you have a read? If anything feels too personal, I will happily take it out.

Then mean it. If they say no, thank them and take it out without any sighing.

Children need extra thought, because they cannot really agree to anything yet. A story that seems adorable about a four-year-old may feel very different to the twelve-year-old who finds it one day. You can still write about being a parent. Just lean towards your own experience, and leave out their full names and faces.

If you cannot ask, perhaps because you have lost touch with the person, take extra care. Tell only your own side, and leave out anything they told you in confidence.

Give tender things some time

Some subjects belong entirely to you and still may not be ready: an illness, a loss, a falling-out, a hard year. Writing about them can be a real comfort, to you and to a reader in the same boat.

The trick is to remember that writing and publishing are two separate acts. You can write it all down tonight, as messy as it comes, and nobody needs to see it. Let it rest for a week or a month, then come back and ask yourself a few questions:

1. Would I be comfortable if my mum, my manager or my neighbour read this?
2. Will I still be glad this is out there in five years?
3. Am I sharing this because it might help someone, or because I want a particular person to feel bad?

A wobble on any of these is not necessarily a no. It may mean “not yet”, or “not that paragraph”. And some drafts do all their good work without ever being published, which is a perfectly fine ending for them.

Telling the truth without the address

The choice is rarely all or nothing. Very often you can keep the feeling and blur the facts around it.

• Swap specifics for shapes. “My old job” works as well as the company’s name, and “a small town in the hills” is plenty for your About Me too.
• Soften the timing. “One winter” or “a few years ago” keeps a story from pointing at a particular week.
• Use a stand-in name. “My friend, who I will call Bea” is honest and easy to follow.

There is one line worth holding here: blur, but do not invent. Leaving things out is your right, and changing a name is fine. Making up events to throw people off the scent is where trust starts to wobble. If you have altered much, a quick “I have changed a few details” keeps everything above board.

Curious readers may ask for the missing pieces. You do not owe anyone an answer. “I keep that part off the blog, but thank you for asking” is a complete reply, and our note on replying kindly to comments has more ideas for moments like that.

Write your own little house rules

Deciding everything from scratch, post by post, is tiring. A short list of your own takes most of the strain away. Yours might look something like this:

• I do not name my workplace or my children’s school.
• I write about trips after I get home.
• If someone else is in the story, they read it first.
• Anything written in a temper waits a week.

You are allowed to change your mind about older posts too. If one sits badly with you later, edit it or take it down. Just bear in mind that a copy may linger for a while in a search result, an RSS reader or someone’s screenshot, which is why pausing before you publish is so much easier than fixing things afterwards. And if something about you ever appears on SnowyPaw that you would rather was not there, the contact page has a topic called “My data and privacy” for exactly that.

As for that post about your sister, send it to her and see what she says. Whatever her answer is, you will still have a whole front room of things to write about.