8 Clicks from Nowhere Productions

A
BLOG
FROM
NOWHERE

  • Doodling Inspiration

    A huge part of my creative process as I work on a new novel has been sketching.

    I assume lots of authors, the kind who are also meticulous planners, make notes. I make notes, too, but I have also been using a form of visual note taking. 

    It works like this.

    I open up the next blank spread in my sketchbook, I write the chapter name somewhere central on the page, and then I start sketching out something that is a cross between a vision board and an idea chart on that page. I include sketches of characters introduced in that chapter. I sketch out objects that make appearances in the scene. I sketch the facade of the building or the stuff hanging on the walls or the grove of trees that I think I might want to mention somewhere in the story. 

    The result is that as I then go to write the chapter itself, I have not just my plan and the words that describe what I plan to write about, but I also have this rough collection of doodles and drawings that spark more connections and drive my writing forward.

    I can’t tell you how well it will ultimately work for me because it is a new thing I am trying, but so far it seems to be inking out strong inspiration every day.

  • Impossible Summit

    It’s easy to aim too high when we start a new project. It’s easy to think that anything we create should be a final, salable product to hold up to the whole world for judgement. It’s actually pretty tough to recognize that almost everything we make should start off as something just for our own selves and maybe never become more than that.

    I am just starting out on this project and I have not only accepted that every new post is not going to be a gem of enlightenment and a spark of insight. 

    I have decades of writing experience, but even so, the idea of generating something interesting to say five times a week is daunting and seems as though an endless mountain is rising in front of me.

    Yet.

    The climb is the point. 

    I may never reach that impossible summit.

    And anyone who creates needs to be okay with that idea.

    Nothing here is meant to be a final, salable product held up for judgement because most of it is just for myself, yes, shared with the world but nothing more than that.

    January 13 – Audio Version

  • Creating on Routine

    Last October I decided I was going to sketch every single day of the month.

    I broke out a fresh sketch book, I gave myself a few basic constraints, and I drew one sketch for each day in October.

    Can you guess how many of those sketches were amazing?

    Basically none.

    Sure, there were a few solid works and I even shared a half dozen of them. But if I was seeking perfectionism—or worse, waiting for it to even get started on my artist journey—I would have drawn one thing on October first …and then very likely given up.

    Instead, I embraced it as an incremental effort of modest improvement.  The goal wasn’t to create thirty-one great sketches, no, the goal was to sketch thirty-one times.

    The goal wasn’t fame or a viral drawing or something I could sell. The goal was creating on a routine.

    It’s easy to aim too high. It’s easy to think that anything and everything we create should be a final, salable product to hold up to the whole world for judgement.

    It’s actually pretty tough to recognize that almost everything we make should start off as something just for our own selves and maybe never become more than that.

    January 12, 2026 – Audio Version

  • Developing Vocal Technique

    I want to get better at recorded voice work. Maybe for the purposes of making a podcast. Maybe because recording an audiobook from my stories is on my dream list. Maybe just improving my microphone presence seems kinda important if ever I need to do another video job interview.

    I consulted the wisdom of the internets and not counting the long list of technical adjustments and microphone setups and rules for fine tuning the recording equipment, it gave me three points to focus on to hone some of my own voice skills:

    Warming Up, which is to say doing vocal exercises for three or so minutes prior to attempting to record anything, which includes exercises like humming, trilling or reciting tongue twisters.

    Speaking for the Microphone, or as it suggested, exaggerating consonants, enunciating, and speaking more slowly than one would speak to a crowd or when having a conversation.

    Listening Back, by stopping after thirty seconds or a minute of trial recording and examining the effort like a critic, not critically, but with an aim to notice vocal tics, breathing, pacing, and other flubs.

    Practice, as they say, makes perfect.

    And if not perfect … well, then at least my microphone will get some extra use this month.

  • Wet Sounds

    Recent forays into musical experimentation with various electronic devices has taught me a new concept: wet and dry sounds.

    As I understand it, and simply, dry sounds are raw, clean and unprocessed audio coming directly from an instrument while wet sounds are sounds that have been enhanced with reverbs, echos, delays and other effects. The latter is usually achieved by the use of pedals or pass-through devices that are controlled by a musician for deliberately altering, distorting and otherwise enhancing the source audio.

    I bought a little low-budget synthesizer about a year ago and have had some enormous creative fun learning to first play it and more recently how to make music with the device.  But dipping into a world of music that I had little previous experience—at least as a creator—meant that I often found I was edging up against creative barriers that I didn’t know how to understand or articulate.

    Case in point: wet versus dry sounds.

    My synth is dry. And I have since ordered a pass-through device, a pedal, that allows me to add some of those wet features that I have been missing.

    My point: sometimes creating with what we know and what we have until such time as we reach a point when we notice the gaps is the best way to discover new concepts.