8 Clicks from Nowhere Productions

Category: [27] Space & Silence

Silence, solitude, and finding the conditions that let your creative self breathe.

Chapter List

  • Sonic Vibes

    Since I started writing this blog I have been working on a parallel personal project: I’ve been honing, refining and curating a playlist for working.

    As I write this, it contains nearly seven hours of music.

    I’ve gone through countless musical phases in my life when it comes to finding something chill to plug into my ears while I’m trying to write or be creative. For a few years I was really into LoFi but I think I’ve grown out of that at the moment, so instead I started putting songs into a “working” playlist. When I turn that on I have confidence that I’ll have a quiet, downbeat, ambient, vocal-lite collection of songs and sounds to listen to that meet a number of criteria: they are calming, they are limited in their distraction, and they fill the background.

    Your own playlist will certainly vary by taste, but I can’t help but highly recommend the exercise of making one.

    Make one for quiet working.

    Make one for inspired sketching.

    Make one to play as you get into the mood to make other music.

    Make one each for lightness and darkness and happiness and melancholy, too.

    Sound can be an integral part of your creative space, and it is a worthwhile exercise to take the time and effort to decorate that space with a sonic vibe that fits the need of the moments you will spend there creating.

  • Go Board 

    About a year ago I started getting advertisements for a neat little writing setup called a distraction-free word processor. There were a couple varieties, but usually they were little more than a cheap little keyboard attached to a simple screen and marketed as a “this device does one thing” tool. It was intended to keep distractible writers on task by removing the allure of all the other apps on our computers and phones.

    I didn’t buy one.

    But I did realize that the idea itself is solid, and if implemented in other ways has a secondary and perhaps more important benefit.

    For my own version, I bought a small, lightweight bluetooth keyboard, tethered a small phone stand to the wrist strap (yes, my keyboard has a wrist strap) and I keep it handy when I go out to run errands or on travel jaunts or am just playing dad’s taxi. 

    It is not only about eliminating distractions, but it also becomes about casual convenience and opportunity. 

    I am sitting in a cafe right now writing this on my portable setup while I wait for an appointment. I could have brought my computer but I didn’t want to lug it around all morning. I could have brought a book, but why read when I can write? I went light, and then realized I had both time to kill …and a keyboard in my car.

    In this case the distractionlessness is secondary to the opportunity to create—and to create on the go.

    I’m not selling anything here except the idea that the best creative tool is the one you have ready when you are ready and able to create something. A sketchbook in your pocket. A camera on your phone. A keyboard in the glovebox of your vehicle.

    You might think that a simpler and more convenient tool is not going to showcase your best work, but when the alternative is making nothing at all I would argue that making something in the moment is better than having the best tools and never having them around when opportunity strikes.

  • Unfrozen Fools

    It is the first day of April and, no fooling, the start of the fourth month of this blog.

    When I started this blog I came up with clever names for each of the months and I called this one Artsy April, because as the snow around my home finally melts and the world thaws I have each year had this notion to get back outside and explore the world—to take pictures, to sketch the sights, and to make little videos of my adventures therein.

    As often crazy and unstable as the world might seem these days, there is creative inspiration to be found everywhere—and hope to be had from discovering it.

    For a month that starts with acts of jokes and trickery, deceit and mockery, no matter how well intentioned, it might be interesting to consider what the other twenty nine days of April should look like. To me a month inspired by the reawakening of the world and emergence of life from the soil and branches, and the wonder that offers to those of us who have just survived a long dark winter can—and should—try to splash some colour and joy back into our shared spaces.

  • Clear Minded

    I spent a whole month last year trying to meditate. 

    I read about it.[1] I downloaded apps. I set up a space in my home and (since it was summer) I found quite places in the park to sit and find focus.

    My conclusion was not that meditation didn’t work, but rather that I had already been meditating: I had been finding mindfulness on the running trail during solo runs. So, I deleted the apps and stashed my pillow and put my sneakers back on.

    The other takeaway lesson was that meditative mindfulness is critical for my creative process. Long runs—which works for me, by the way, and everyone needs to find their own effective source of clarity—emptied my brain and allowed the ideas to come out and play.

    I am not a meditation expert, but I have done both a lot of meditative running and creative ideation. Clearing the mind—whether by sitting quietly listening to chants or going for a long drive or sinking into the warmth of the sun on a beach or putting on a pair of trail shoes and snaking through the woods at speed—seems to be a critical piece of many people’s creative process. Find yours.

  • Stepped Inspiration

    I’ll be the first to admit that inspiration is not motivation, but one definitely can lead to the other.

    As I write these words I just got back from a long walk. I slipped on my winter shoes, I grabbed my headphones, locked the door behind me and stepped out into the still-snowy paths of a late-February morning. (Yeah, I’m also writing these a week or so ahead of when I post them!) 

    I went out looking for inspiration.

    I had sat down to write something before even deciding to go on a walk and I got stuck. My brain froze up. The Blankwraith crept into my head and froze up my thinker, fingers hovering over the keyboard in empty headed paralysis. 

    But then, simple as it sounds, within five minutes of stepping out the door something loosened up and the ideas started flowing. I’ll write in a future post about the importance of carrying a note-taking tool, but needless to say I opened mine, still within sight of my house, and started jotting.

    My walk lasted an hour. I did a loop around our local suburban neighborhood, trudging through the sloppy, icy sidewalks. And every couple of minutes I would pull out my notes and add another sentence or two to the stack. 

    I counted. I had jotted down thirty-two unique ideas.

    By the time I got home and walked in the door, my biggest concern wasn’t lack of ideas but lack of time to get them turned into little two hundred word essays.

    I went for a walk looking for inspiration and it turns out they were hanging out just down the street.