8 Clicks from Nowhere Productions

A
BLOG
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NOWHERE

  • Morning Vibes

    The ritual of the commute may not spark other folks like it sparked me, but having become a guy who largely works from home—be that on my own projects or on contract work—I have started to understand not just the value, but the need to have a morning groove.

    (As an aside, it hasn’t helped my routine that I also gave up coffee a couple months ago—for health reasons.)

    Without ritual, without pattern, without routine I often find that my day struggles to really start. I’ll sit in a cozy chair in my pyjamas (really) and at some point look up and it will be nine-thirty, and though I’ve poked around on some files or done some pre-work, my day feels decidedly unstarted.

    On the other hand, if I plan to be out the door and sitting in a cafe by 8am with a hot drink in front of me and my laptop open to a word processor, then by nine-thirty I’ve often already written something, posted something, or at least made progress on a project of some sort.

    The difference is stark, and all that accounts for it is the routine of a morning plan.

  • Keyboard Reps

    Creativity is kind of a muscle. 

    I drove the kid to the community recreation centre this evening and, if only because I pulled a muscle in my back and need to rest it, I brought my computer instead of my own gym gear.

    Usually I come to this building to literally work out my body. I run on the track or do some cycling training on the bike, or do a few sets on the weight machines. I’m not claiming to be a gym nut of any kind, but I do a lot of thinking (and even writing) about the work it takes to keep your body—lungs, heart, muscles, and all of it—in shape.

    Tonight, I’m sitting here with my computer doing some writing.

    I just dropped another five hundred words into my work-in-progress novel.

    Now I’m writing this little ditty. 

    I’m working out my creativity tonight, doing reps on the keyboard, which is arguably an important part of keeping that kind-of but-not-really a muscle in shape.

    I won’t claim to be breaking much of a sweat, but it’s hard work and dedication just the same.

  • Slow Down Cowboy

    I spent nearly three hours this morning working on recording audio for my project and the end result of all that work is what probably amounts to only about three minutes of usable audio.

    Let me back up.

    I am working on a new novel, and a side-project part of that effort has me attempting to translate it from the written word stuck inside a word processor on my computer into an audiobook-style production with some bespoke tunes and sound effects.

    I have a solid microphone setup with a pre-amp, hardware digital recorder, digital synths, effects pedals and wires going in twelve different directions.

    But it turns out after all the work I did to write a story and set up a technology jungle to set my voice into sound waves in file on my hard drive, what I needed most was practice reading at a practiced pace suitable for storytelling.

    Who would have thought, huh?

    When I figured out how to read slowly, enunciating each word, the results were oh so much better.

  • Drive-by Storytelling

    My kid, who is technically an adult studying theatre and literature at University, was chatting over the weekend about story design.

    “I don’t ever know when to start a story.” She said. “Like, do you write from the beginning or jump into the action, or—”

    Look, I’m no expert but I can tell you that such things are a combination a lot of other things: two of the big ones being personal style and confidence in the reader.

    I write my stories in a way that I usually think of as drive by storytelling.

    The reader doesn’t go to the story, listen to the whole tale, then drive away when it’s finished.

    Rather, they drive by: the story is happening and they hear a piece of it as they “drive by” and then keep going while the story keeps happening in the rearview mirror. 

    To clarify, I do focus on writing the important nuggets of the tale being told and not random, meaningless chunks.

    But by working in this model I tend to write in a way that focuses my personal style on having confidence that the reader will understand enough of what happened before they got there and enough of what will continue to go on after they pass by.

  • Musical Motif

    One of the ideas I have about my most recent writing project is that the end goal is not (merely) a novel.

    I want to make an audio story.

    Back as far a my university days I had it in my mind to try to make an audio drama in the style of H2G2 or Ruby.  

    I went about it completely backwards, of course, trying to improv a script while learning all the audio tools. I would get five minutes of groovy sound effects wrapped around a nothing script and then quit because I had never done any planning. I was using borrowed sounds and music in free software I had very little knowledge of how to use and making up a science fiction story on the fly. It was a recipe to accomplish nothing—except maybe learn from my mistakes.

    So I’ve been working on a story first.

    But also…

    In the last couple years I have built on the knowledge I had around music theory and audio software and have started to learn the basics of music production. I have been acquiring the tools—mics, synths, mixers, recorders, and recently an effects pedal—to produce my own soundscapes. 

    And? This week I actually wrote a song. Well… actually the technical term is called a leitmotif. It is the basic building block of a recurring musical theme tied to a character, place, group, or whatever. And… I wrote one.