8 Clicks from Nowhere Productions

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  • Idea Bank

    Case in point: I had been watching videos about creative note-booking strategies on YouTube, too many to make it worth linking to them, and thinking about my own process for tracking ideas, brainstorming and creative ideation, and I sat down to write this post.  In my notes, months ago, I had already written “an idea bank by carrying a notebook even a digital one is a foundational tool for creative” on a bulleted list at the top of a digital topic page somewhere.

    I keep an idea bank.

    It’s not complex.

    And that’s the whole point. 

    It’s simple. It’s low effort. It’s low friction, as the business gurus might put it.

    I use the notes app on my phone, keep a date-stamped note near the top of the list, and just add new post ideas to the top of the list when said ideas cross my mind. No bullet lists. No categorized planning. No grids or charts or bubble flows. Just note on list.

    Later, when I’m sitting in a cafe sipping on a tea I’ll go through them and copy-paste them into a giant living document that I have going where I write my posts. Personally, and this isn’t so much an endorsement as it is a I happen to use note, I use Scrivener on a Mac. It is billed as writing software and is the closest I’ve come to a big multi-document, cloud-synced, writers organizational platform as anything.  Results may vary, so do your own research for what works for you.

    Which is to say: keep it simple.

    I’ve gone simple and it works for me.

    If I had to put a point on this it would be merely to tell you that creativity happens anywhere at any time—you know that—and the best tool to capture that is not one that involves tapping some of that creativity to engage with it. The best tool to capture it is one that takes the absolute minimum space: a sheet of paper with a pen, a notebook you carry around with you, a voice memo, or the simplest text app on your phone.

    Bank on it.

  • Poets Processing

    Daily writing has a way of losing focus. I dive down metaphorical rabbit holes all the time, and yet I’d be the first to tell you that such things are not just okay, but a kind of magical side effect of creativity. A perk.

    As I collect topics and ideas to fill these pages I have gone down one particular hole multiple times and at times have risked turning this blog into something else entirely.

    The bad part of that is losing focus on something I care about—creative pursuits—and is not (strategically speaking) the direction in which I want to take this project.

    The good part of that diversion is I that I do in fact have the time, resources and inclination to pursue those topics in another place.

    All this is to say that as of this month I’m going to be (trying to)maintain two daily blogs—yikes!—and write on two different topics.

    Here, on “Eight Clicks from Nowhere” I will keep on track with my ramblings related to creative motivation, insights into building skills and habits to make stuff, and write about the interesting (at least to me) hobbies that clutter my life.

    Over on “on poets & processors” I am building a new site around the topic of the dehumanization of art and creativity by algorithmic competition: how AI is invading the creative spaces and simultaneously stealing work while probably, maybe, sort of creating interesting new opportunities… and what’s the deal?

    Advance warning: there may be some cross posting, but as they veer off down different paths I suspect it may turn into more of a cross-blog conversation.  Or, whatever: what do I know, I’m not a machine here.

    Check it out.

  • Uncritical Content

    At first I was casually avoid it, but lately I’ve been actively blocking and aggressively veering my personal algorithm away from it: complaint baiting. 

    Sloppy critique often starts off as sincere criticism. I imagine so, anyhow. I would like to think that many of the types of armchair film critics and technology buffs and gaming reviewers started off with a genuine interest in doing artistic criticism.

    Rightly defined criticism and critique are invaluable aspects of the feedback loop for artists and creators. One of those difficult but important skills any artist must learn is how to take critique and learn from it without crumbling under the perception of negativity.  Good critique, after all, is not anger or dismissal or ridicule: it is important information to help someone redirect their effort and improve it on the next iteration or attempt. 

    Yet, social media has become rife with what seems to be more of something I would call complaint-driven content. It disguises itself as critique, but rather than offering insight or nudging the artist in a slightly different, presumably better direction creatively… it rails. It gripes. It complains. It mocks. It leeches off the work to make something ugly of its own that was never intended to lift or improve or offer even critical support of the original.

    I have to assume there is an audience for that, and an audience means clicks and revenue.  The capital-driven feedback loop never fails in this regard.

    I also have to assume the only recourse towards weakening its grasp on society is to each do our parts in ignoring it, blocking it, and discouraging it through our lack of attention.

  • Linked Out

    There is a flavour of professional writing which I find myself trying to avoid veering into.

    If you’ve ever been on that professional networking social media platform you know exactly what I’m talking about, those articles that talk about leadership, career growth and always seem to find a new way to write an article called what I learned about insert-business-trope-here from insert-random-life-experience-there.

    On site, those articles get lots of likes and reshares, but off site many assume it is all a lot of performative mugging, a bit vapid, and almost certainly driven by a lot of generative AI.

    So when a guy like me sits down to write a daily article on creative motivation or skill development or artistic niche hunting, it would be real easy to drift into the lane where all those aforementioned articles persist.

    That’s not my goal.  Far from it, in fact. It’s the reason I don’t pepper this site with advertising. I want to be more than that. Better than that. And in fact if I were to suggest that what I’m doing here is writing articles with that similar flavour but also with a lot more homespun sincerity and (what I’m hoping is) experiential insight then you might be closer to understanding where I’m coming from with this writing project.

    Still, the problem remains: writing optimistic micro-essays about creative pursuits is a genuine niche and one that has drawn the ire and ridicule of many who see it, when poorly or hastily done, as an disingenuous to the spirits of voice and purpose and method.

    It becomes just more slop.

    But I think I can avoid that.

    After all, just because fast food commodified and ruined the hamburger, doesn’t mean you won’t find a delicious example of one somewhere else, right?

  • Gaps Spaces

    It’s a sad reality of the modern age that art (usually) doesn’t pay very well.

    Artists at the top of their game can, of course, find great fame and wealth in creative practice, but the reality is that most of us are struggling to hone skill, practice our crafts, write our fiction, and justify expensive equipment purchases in the gaps and spaces of otherwise busy lives.

    Work schedules. Parenting duties. Trying to eat well. Doing housework. Commuting. Nurturing  relationships. All of it is important and barring some sociopathic commitment to leaving it all behind to focus on watercolour painting or recording a solo album, most of us are working with the leftovers.

    Malcom Gladwell wrote about a famously misinterpreted theory of the ten thousand hour rule in his book Outliers [1], which a lot of people took to mean if you do something for ten thousand hours then you will become an expert, tada, wipes hands, mission complete. But the actual basis of that theory is that the people who became successful simply had access to ten thousand free hours because of the support systems in their lives: someone else was paying the bills, caring for the kids, and washing the dishes—all while they honed their craft.

    Limited free time to pursue creativity is the norm. I don’t have a lot of answers, but I do have some ideas.

    Under the category of Gaps & Spaces, I’lll be writing more on this topic as the months wear on.