Nick Kauffman, L.L.C.

At the age of 17, I wrote the following at the beginning of a blog entry:

Hello, and welcome to another edition of Rivernico News, a division of Nicolas Entertainment, a subsidiary of Nickslife, which is owned by Miller Kauffman Parentals Inc., who are in turn owned by the United States Government (along with the United Kingdom, Israel, and your soul).

I would like to note that I am now a 51% owner of Nickslife, though Miller Kauffman Parentals still have a large share.  And despite a level of teenage hotheadedness that even most people familiar with my current hotheadedness wouldn't believe I possessed, I'm still proud that I was making snide political remarks five years ago.  You know, before it was cool.

I remember very much enjoying that whole company/subsidiary splicing of my life.  Beyond its comedic value, it gave me a sense of order.  I could divide my life into segments, each one tailored to some specific purpose.  Today, I find myself seeking some clarity like that for my writing.

There is a lot I want to write.  I have two worlds of fantasy-fiction waiting for me to put them into novel form for my first few million dollars.  I write poetry (though it doesn't really sell).  I write moral and theological commentaries.  I want to write my life stories.  And sometimes I just want to write what I'm feeling.

How do I parse all that?  All these authors I read have specialties.  They write about one thing.  I don't want to restrict myself that way... though I suppose I could actually write all this stuff I want to write and see what succeeds.

Then there are the readers.  Not the ones I don't know; I'm fine with them.  But I can't have my Grandma reading memoirs of my college days.  I can't have my professors reading my fantasy fiction (after all, that genre is loaded with the myth of redemptive violence).  And the things I want to write don't always mesh or agree with each other, so even if I wrote under a pen name, would I need more than one?

Sometimes I think about starting a new blog so I can just write and write and write and not worry about my audience.  Who cares if some random person from Bangladesh stumbles across my blog and reads all my innermost thoughts?  I'll never meet them.

But then, I want to claim what I write.  In anonymity, nobody matters.  Maybe people with interesting things to say, sure, but my only selling point is that people know me personally.

I want to assure everyone that my real writing looks nothing like my blogging.  When I blog, I write until I'm tired of writing.  When I write, I actually take the time to form some sort of conclusion.