8 Clicks from Nowhere Productions

Category: [2026] The First Year

Chapter List

  • 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.

  • Doodling Inspiration, two

    (Continued from Doodling Inspiration)

    Once I get past the idea of seeking quality in my art, I often find that doodling is a kind of meditative randomness that drives me creatively.

    Doodling is different than drawing, of course. Drawing and sketching in my mind implies an external subject, and turning what one sees into lines and colour on the page. Sketching is the act of replacing a camera with a bit of ink or pencil lead. 

    Doodling, on the other hand, is the freedom of the pen on paper to explore shapes and express notions that are mere thoughts in our own heads. It is generative. It is creation from ideation into shape and form upon a blank canvas. It is something from the intangible and ineffable. It is an outlet for our deepest minds to express themselves. 

    I have been re-reading The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes[1], a controversial book of pop psychological theory that speculates that consciousness arose from the conversation that happens inside our own minds between the two lobes our our brain. 

    Whether you buy it or not, its central premise of Jaynes’ book relies on the notion of two plus two equalling five: or that is to say, that the union of two things is often more than the sum of its parts. 

    In as much as my doodles combine with my fiction writing to make more than the sum of their parts, a mental creative union of something perhaps just as curious and interesting as consciousness itself, no?

  • Creative Positive, two

    (Continued from Creative Positive)

    I need to routinely remind myself that every time I don’t post something positive in my feed it leaves a gap for something negative to slip in and take up the space I left for it.

    The darkness is insidious. It is sweet like raw sugar upon the tongue, lighting up our emotions with an ability to draw us in and feast upon our time and energy.

    You may be reading these words—all of them, the blog and every post and every image and all the adjacent works of public performative creativity that goes on around it—and pondering the purpose. 

    I have a hundred reasons to write and create and sketch and make and build and do interesting things. But I have a very short list of reasons to share: it is, yes, about money and brand and fame, of course it is, it always is—but it is also about balance. It’s about holding my little patch of digital ground against the darkness. 

    It is about creating human-made ideas and sharing them into the ocean of slop.

    It is about being a net-positive in an electronic sea of rage.

    It is about finding the good of the world and launching it back into the universe for something bigger than myself.

    So long as I have hope that the world still needs something bigger and brighter than the dim shadows of this societal chasm we seem to be traversing I will get up each morning and try my best to find something positive to make …and share.

  • Post Haste

    I’m going to let you peek behind the curtain for a moment and remind you that sometimes creativity is smoke and mirrors, too.

    Truth is, I write these words weeks in advance of you reading them.

    Writing a daily blog is not always just about the dedicated day-after-day work of coming up with new ideas and then sitting down at a keyboard. Rather, sometimes it’s about working smarter and planning ahead. Sometimes it’s about organization and staging and schedules. Sometimes it’s a business plan.

    You want a life skill? You want to be better at a desk job? You want to get into a corporate strategic mindset? You want to learn how to get stuff done on a schedule? Oh, you can read about it in a textbook or download a course on business planning. 

    But might I suggest that you try instead a big creative project.

    Make a weekly web comic that demands you create on a schedule and manage a website.

    Join a band and try to release a demo that involves scheduling, promotion and technical skills.

    Write a novel that insists on long term strategic planning and holding big scope ideas in your head.

    I write these posts sometimes weeks in advance and try to keep between five and ten in my publication queue. Not only does that save me from rushing to write something on topic on every busy morning, but it gives me time to edit and hone and shuffle and plan out how I am making this site.

    It’s strategy. It’s planning. It’s bigger.

    And it’s more than creativity: it’s resume fodder, too.