I'm not very close to my parents. My stepfather (in my opinion) was very emotionally abusive when I was growing up and there were a lot of other issues I don't feel comfortable talking about publicly. I spent a lot of time in therapy dealing with these issues though, and I feel i'm finally starting to move past them.

I think I would have been a lot more miserable and discovered a lot less of things I liked if I hadn't had LiveJournal in high school. I think it's interesting how blogging seems to be shaping a new generation of writers. I feel like growing up with the Internet/blogging/other structures seems to be a reason for the similarities people see in Tao Lin's writing and other young writers, rather than direct.

I'll be the first to admit I wasn't very happy doing what I did [escorting] nor was I very talented at it, so perhaps that's what worked to make it boring for me. However it's hard for me to imagine that a lot of young women who would enjoy and be good at being an escort.

I've gotten a lot of exposure for my writing. My writing blog has gotten over 1000 unique hits since the Observer piece (quite a lot as before it was something like 20 people a day if I was lucky.) But more importantly the coverage exposed me to and so has allowed me to connect with a lot of new people I really enjoy interacting with.

Obviously this all gets tricky/complicated when your writing reveals so much of your private/intimate life, and the nature of writing on the Internet comes with a lot of focus on your "personal brand."

I've never written about a situation involving real people that I haven't directly taken part in. I've never made things up about other people. None of my stories were written with ill-intent towards the other people in them, even though I doubt people will believe that about "Adrien Brody."

I guess that my opinion of writing about real people is informed by defenses of Joyce Maynard's memoir, that the experiences were a part of my life as well, and that I have the right to write about my life.