8 Clicks from Nowhere Productions

A
BLOG
FROM
NOWHERE

  • Anything New

    I never really learned to play the piano.

    That is, sure, I could jab the keys and grind out a mean Chopsticks as well as the next ten year old, and sure, we had a little keyboard propped up in our living room when I was growing up, and sure, I could poke a key or two at a time to feel out a song. But I never took lessons, never practiced scales, never learned chords, and never did anything besides fumble at the ivories.

    I have been trying to remedy that in 2026, and my days are incomplete if I haven’t sat down at the keys for at least half an hour each day.

    I recommend learning something new. Anything, really.

    Acquiring new skills can sometimes unlock a powerful ability that you never knew you were missing until you found it. A new perspective, a new way of looking at old problems, or a new bit of insight into the otherwise mundane.

    And you never really know what that will be until you try to acquire those skills.

    When I took up running I started to see the world from the perspective of footpaths and interconnected trails.

    When I learned watercolour paints I suddenly saw colours in a different way.

    Now when I get my head around the piano and chords I listen to music differently, hear the shapes of things when I watch movies, and get a bigger sense of sounds that dance around genres of music.

    Your experience will vary.  But you will experience.

  • Oughta Should

    When did we force play to become learning?

    And I’m not just talking about the kids. I mean, all of us? Why can’t we just play?

    Oh, I admit, this is probably a personal observational bias, but it seems more and more from what I read, and talking to other people—parents, friends and creative contemporaries—over the years the idea that anyone can just play for the raw enjoyment of something has turned into a pariah. 

    All too often I fall into the trap myself. 

    I feel like I can’t just sketch, but rather I need to be making something for my online portfolio.

    I shouldn’t be playing music, instead I ought to be practicing repertoire or logging my progress.

    Even just sitting here at a keyboard writing I am thinking not about the joy and fun that I get out of typing words, but rather my mind is always drifting over to content and audience and something bigger that I should be seeking from this act.

    Of course, these invasive thoughts are at my own control, and maybe—lucky you—you are able to ignore them and just enjoy doing things for the sake of it. But then if you are the type of person to be reading a blog post that started with such a question maybe too you are like me and feel guilt from directionless creativity.

    So I ask again: When did we force play to become learning? And how can we snap out of it?

  • Yes And

    As I write these words I am contemplating an opportunity.

    I don’t write about it much here but the fact is that I don’t work full time. We saved. We picked hobbies and interests that are relatively inexpensive. We cook at home. We budget. And as a result we can live on a single income, our savings and a pretty modest pay that comes from my sporadic and occasional work. It’s a dash of privilege with a dose of planning. And I’m not apologizing.

    But it does mean that sometimes that occasional work comes in the form of something strange and interesting that throws a wrench into the simple routine. Like: I got a call asking if I would like to go travel for a week to do some contract work.

    Of course I would, I replied. 

    And so as I write this it seems pretty likely I’ll be packing my bags and going on a long trip to do some real work, shake some hands, and bumble around a place I’ve never been before. It would certainly be a change from my usual drudge of local cafes and my home office. 

    One of the rules I gave myself when I scaled back from full time work was to always keep myself in a state of yes. That is, if an opportunity (such as this one) presented itself, to start from the word yes and allow it to take me where it would.  

    Because here’s the the thing: not only would it be easy as a guy spending his days in pursuit of a creative second career to say no a lot, to hunker down and shut out the world while he pounded away on his keyboard as I pushed forward on a project, but it could almost certainly become the default.

    And yet, there is something inspiring, motivating, and genuinely creatively reinvigorating about a change of scenery and meeting new people. 

  • Story Layers

    One approach I have noted while writing fiction bears a striking similarity to watercolour painting.

    I have been dabbling in watercolours for about half a decade (as I write this) and it took me a good chunk of that time to get my head around the true power of watercolour painting: layers.

    For a long while I was making reasonably good paintings with a technique that was closer to colouring in the lines: I would sketch something in pencil, then paint it in, mixing my colours in the tray.  The results were okay.

    Then I took a class and was forced to learn about layers. 

    Watercolours are semi-transparent, and when used in particular way can be built up layer by layer to add tonality, depth, blends and dimensionality. Draw a three dimensional cube. Paint all three visible sides with one layer, then paint two of the sides with another layer of the same paint, and then paint one side with a final layer, again with the same paint: voila, you have three shades of paint, implied shadows, and a depth that wouldn’t exist without this simple bit of layering technique.

    I started to think what that looks like with words.  We storytellers sometimes rush through a scene to describe it, but what if we painted back over parts of that scene with additional layers, again and again, until the depth and dimensionality we were seeking appeared right there on the page. 

  • Eyes Ears

    If you were to ask me about the most basic requirements of creativity, I may suggest that observation and awareness of the universe are about as fundamental of a skill as there is.

    We are in the middle of a weird space and time in the timeline of creative pursuit. At no other point in history has the average person been able to have access to so much inspiration, feedback and educational content. Simultaneously, society has fostered these massive generative content engines we often call artificial intelligence and are using them to churn all of that into an output that ranges from the curious and interesting to the negligent and slop-laden. 

    I doubt that there has been a time in history that equals this for the opening of eyes and ears to the complexity of what it means to create.

    And yet I also think that there is very little new—and where new does squeak through the cracks of Xeroxed regurgitation of commercialization and generative language models and social media influence it squeaks through when a person notices something interesting the piques the ineffable nuances of our brains. We observe and think and churn and ponder. And what comes out the other end may be interesting and beautiful. It may be creative. 

    At the heart of all those other things is knowing that what the ghost in the machine can accomplish is now no longer distinguishable from human skill, but that seeing and listening and feeling are a core skill yet uncaptured by an algorithm. 

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