8 Clicks from Nowhere Productions ䷀

Category: [27] Space & Silence

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

Chapter List

  • Gold Pans

    I was out for a walk near the river recently when I came across a guy sitting on a stool panning for gold. He had a small wagon-load of equipment, but he hailed me closer and talked me through the effort while he showed me the flecks of gold he’d dredged from the sand. They were right there reflecting off the bottom of his plastic pan.

    It was an encounter that was compelling enough that for a day or two I actually considered going to the local outdoor store and buying my own gold panning pan. I haven’t yet, but as I’m often wont to do my brain turned his hobby in an apt metaphor for the creative process in general.

    Creativity is after all sifting through a lot of worthless crud to find flecks of something more valuable.

    We often see the final product, but neglect to notice the heaps of debris remaining from the process itself.

    My gold panning friend told it me took five shovelfuls of riverbed muck and a couple hours worth of effort to reveal that dim constellation of golden specks on the bottom of his pan. Were they not clinging to the pan by hydrostatic forces they would have fluttered away in a stiff breeze. The heap of rocky mud at his feet was orders of magnitude larger.

    How many words does a writer need to write before the best distillation and clearest ideas of value form on her page?

    How much paint does an artist need to brush onto paper before something beautiful emerges from the colours?

    How many notes are lost to practice and rehearsal and noodling towards refined skill before a musician performs or records a hit?

    We’re all panning for gold, in our way, and the yields seem microscopic when viewed from the perspective of effort. But too, they are just as likely to glitter in the eyes of a random passerby who we call over to look at what we’ve made.

  • Drift Works

    Is your creative space a refuge? 

    I’ve been thinking a lot about disappearing our minds away into imaginary spaces. 

    We all do this, I think. Maybe we don’t always think of it like this, but letting our minds wander through crafted scenarios, daydreaming, thinking over problems and relationships, pondering strange ideas and realities… it all adds up to a kind of mental drift work.

    It feels foundational to creativity, to me at least.

    I had a quirky childhood—we all do I suppose—and my imagination was a place I could sneak away to when I needed to get away from reality. Oops. A bit of personal insight there—maybe, but I think there are likely a lot of us who use imagination as a kind of escape from the here and now.

    I’m certainly no therapist, but it does lead me to ponder how much creative expression is intertwined with exploration of our own mental realms—and how much of it happens because we are cleaning out the cobwebs of our own consciousness while we’re biding time hiding out from real world problems.

    As an adult I escape into meditative spaces when I run or write or just sitting back in a comfortable chair, and some of the best ideas I have are not things I’m chasing down but rather explorations I’m making through this mental space I’ve built for myself over a lifetime.

    I thought maybe that was weird… but perhaps it’s just human.

  • Morning Person

    It’s nearly 8pm as I write this and I’m stumped.

    I do almost all my writing for this project in the mornings. I get a hot mug of tea, I set up in a quiet-ish place, I open up my word processing software, and I just start writing.

    It’s nearly 8pm as I write this and my family is out for the evening leaving me alone with a quiet house, no obligations, and drizzling bit of cozy weather outside. One would think I’d be up to my elbows in motivation, huh?

    Instead, I’m stumped.

    I’m writing about writing and how I can’t find the focus to write, which is exactly what writers do when they can’t find the motivation or inspiration to write what they are supposed to be writing. Ugh! Writers.

    Lucky for me I have a whole blog about this sort of thing.

    One set of advice will tell you (and I strongly agree) to treat creativity as a job. Sit down. Make the conditions. Get it done. Excuses are people who don’t finish their projects.

    But then—well—there is also a realistic part of me that acknowledges that productivity and progress on a project is also about knowing the conditions when you work best, having a routine, and being in the right frame of mind.

    I’m a morning person.

    I work best in the morning.

    I’m productive in the morning.

    I wrote this in the evening proving that I’m not rigidly locked to that schedule, but given the choice—well, you get the point.

  • 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.