No one has yet asked, but it’s about time I explained: what’s in a name? What’s in my name, to be exact.
I started writing creative fiction under the banner of “8 Clicks from Nowhere” a few years ago. Where it emerged from is not a piece of inspiration that derives meaning or clarity from much anything tangible nor from a deliberate plan. It just is.
An 8 looks a bit like a B, the first letter of my first name.
Clicks are webby.
And if I claimed to be anywhere but the middle of a creative nowhere, I’d be exaggerating.
Nowhere, you ask?
I have friends who might eagerly disagree with that sentiment if they thought I was exclusively referring to this physical place. Our city, as much as it would hardly qualify for a shortlist of creative hotspots of the world, is neither a slouch for creative souls.
But yet I have often felt a pang of regret that while I live geographically in a place that is just okay for creative collaboration, I definitely live mentally, emotionally, spiritually in a place that is an oasis in a deadly dessert of creative isolation.
I have long struggled to find a kindred spirit of the kind who might dig deep into the fertile soils of imagination where I tend.
It is a lonely creative space.
It has been nothing short of a lifelong state for which I have no clear remedy.
It is, then, a state of creative existence I have embraced in my techie, webby name, finding myself as I do 8 clicks from nowhere in particular.
Terms FROm this POSt
- creative hotspots
- Geographically we often think of places, in certain cities or countries, as being particularly and intrinsically linked to a creative vibe. Los Angeles is a film hotspot, San Francisco is a technology hotspot, or Milan is a fashion hotspot. Those things are limited to those spaces, but one is more likely to encounter others who are pursuing those crafts and with whom the amplification, appreciation, and acclimation of those skills is more likely to encounter kindred spririts.
- inspiration
- A vague concept I mention frequently on this blog but rarely define, I think the notion of being inspired is really at the foundational level, the seeds of creativity. Without inspiration, without muse, without spark creativity is just work or repetition or rote effort. Inspiration does not necessarily need to be monumental or epic or of the highest quality, but rather it is what is at the start of every creative process …until it flowers and drops more seeds of inspiration and the cycle repeats.
- techie
- In the sense of one who has proficiency in the crafts of technology, information, data, and code.
