8 Clicks from Nowhere Productions ䷀

DispatCHes
FROM
NOWHERE

  • Store Front

    Unless you’ve dived deep into these writings you may be blissfully unaware that I am doing (and posting) a lot of words.  I’ve written about writing at various points through this project, from explaining about this website, to name dropping my other parallel projects, to lamenting my struggles with trying to get my fiction into a state of something bigger than some scribbled drafts. Whatever you’ve read, it’s probably not half of the story, but all you need to know is that I’ve been putting words on paper (digital paper, ahem) without break since leaving my government job, and that has been going on three and half years now.

    Phew!

    And with all that sitting in drives and database archives and files and all over the place, I had an idea and the inclination to do something with it.

    I built a digital publication studio… which is not really all that much to do in the modern internet: a couple plugins, more words, some imagery, a payment gateway and a storefront.

    As you are reading this, my shop has been online for a couple days.

    Now look, I’ve committed multiple times in things I’ve written to not advertising on these sites. But when I write that what I mean to tell you is that I’m not going to pepper this site with third party click ads or do sponsored posts or dive into corporate collaborations.

    On the other hand, every creative maker needs a way to sell their own wares.

    My wares are words.  My products have for a long time been (free) websites that are not cluttered with paywalls or ad breaks or spammy experiences.

    To supplement that I decided (like any responsible creative) I should turn those free sites (still now and forever free) into something with a bit of added value. My storefront will start to have a collection of anthologies in PDF or DRM-free ePub formats so that you can download larger collections of posts to read offline, in a more coherent order, and will be yours to own forever.

    So I lied. One advertisement is coming to this site: the occasional nudging reminder that you can support me and my sites by buying a digital download of my work. It’s the dirty side of creativity, but—and I’ve written this over and over, you can download an anthology and check—what’s the point of making stuff if no one ever sees it?

  • Duty Demand

    I suppose many people read this blog and assume that I’m some sort of creative workhorse, never stopping, never resting, burning the candle at both ends (as they say) and churning out endless works of creative brilliance powered by vast, sweeping moments of inspiration granted from on high.

    Heck, nothing could be further from the truth.

    I squeeze in a nap almost every day. I play video games whilst prone on the couch. I take the dog for long meandering walks in the park. I doom scroll. I sit idle while I try to work up the motivation to do something besides sitting idle. I’m just a guy.

    I struggle with ideas. I run plots over and over and over in my head and then decide half way through that the story is going nowhere. I carry around empty notebooks. I put ideas in point form into my phone and then forget what I was trying to say on the topic. I tear up terrible paintings and use the back sides as scrap paper. I noodle on my musical instruments and ignore the pieces I should be practicing while I endlessly tune or wipe dust from the corners. 

    Creativity is a lot of things, but I don’t think I would personally call it a straight line.

    Creativity is a mindset. Creativity is a duty to a long game. Creativity is holding the spirit of making and sharing and inventing and dreaming in your head—and then being ready to push on with the work when opportunity strikes, sure… but it is also habit.

    I am all those things from before but also I block off time every day to write. I keep notes on my phone. I hang those musical instruments near a music stand so I can reach over and pluck them from the wall to play. I have rituals. I have schedules. I have deadlines. I have demands I put upon myself to get the work done through the chaos of life. 

    That’s long game consistency, and creativity often comes simply from getting the work done around other commitments and obligations. Under the category of Duty & Demand I’ll be writing more on this topic as the months wear on.

  • Self Employed

    Society has a bias towards cold, hard cash.

    Look, maybe it’s different where you live, but I’m writing at you from here in a cafe on a chilly autumn morning from the middle of a small Canadian city. Out the window it’s rush hour. Cars are zipping to and fro, on their way to real jobs. Folks are being so-called productive—at least according to the big churning wheels of corporate capitalism.

    Me. I’ll settle into some contract work later, but for now I have the rare privilege to sit here with a cup of tea and spill my thoughts into the keyboard. I’m not making any money being here, typing, writing, doing this thing I’m doing—but I to think of myself as working at this moment, as cushy and non-traditional as it seems.

    I’m basically self-employed, and the more I widen that definition the more I see a fit for how I spend my days.

    It bugs a lot of people, though. I get it. I hear it. I internalize it.

    Capitalism has a job-equals-paycheque bias.

    For example, I spent four hours yesterday (as I write this) afternoon, a Sunday, sitting in front of my laptop working on a short story, drilling into the plot, agonizing over word choices, trying to figure out how to land a strange premise and turn it into an interesting plot. 

    I would say I was working.

    The bias of society would tell you that I was dabbling in a creative hobby.

    The barista who sold me my tea this morning? She is getting a paycheque, earning a wage, and she gets to go home later snug and secure knowing that she made bucks, did a job, and can tell people she’s employed. And she’s not wrong. She’s provided a service and a product and, yeah, I gave her money in exchange.

    As a contrast, I sat here and did complex creative work, wrote something, shared something, made something—but because I did it for free (to many people) it doesn’t seem to count in the same way. 

    Am I wrong? Or have we built up our idea of value and worth on some skewed logic?

  • Short Stories

    As October arrives and I’m just a few short weeks away from turning fifty—five-oh—and of all things to be worried about, I’ve been thinking about my approach to writing fiction.

    I’ve got a half dozen half-written novels stored away on the very computer that I’m writing these words, dangling tales parked on my hard drive and glued in place with countless good intentions to finish each and every one of them.

    Now look, the problem with making some big public proclamation is that there is just as good a chance that I’ll trip and land on my face as cross that distant finish line with my hands triumphantly up in the air. I write another blog all about running, and the thing about running is that it is all about setting out one step at a time and taking each activity, each race, each recovery as it’s own thing—and occasionally you literally do trip and land on your face (or smash into the trunk of a large tree with your shoulder, but that’s another story)—but then you get up and keep running.

    I have a goal for my fifties and it’s something of a marathon of short fiction writing.

    See, all the while that I’ve been accumulating half-written novels, I’ve also been penning an occasional short story. They’ve always been side projects.

    Short stories are not just an important medium in their own right but (going back to that running metaphor) training reps for writing fitness. They train us to think about plots that resolve in a meaningful way. They train us to build daily stamina for nurturing characters. They train us to write good, cohesive fiction.

    So about that goal… Starting in October, my last full month of my forties, I’m going to write and post a single short story. And then I’m gonna write and post another one in November. And another in December… and, well, I’m just going to keep writing a new story every month.

    We’ll try that for a year. 

    And maybe it’ll build a new habit for my fifties. 

    Or maybe I’ll trip and land right on my face. But I gotta try.

  • Short Fiction

    I’ve always had a space in my heart for short fiction.

    Short story is a form that is often under appreciated, and I would chalk this up to a couple strange reasons.

    First, I think it’s a value proposition. I figure it probably costs about the same amount to publish, ship, and market a twenty page book—something that will take a customer a lunch-break to read—as it does a five hundred page novel. Thus, they cost the same at the store. We get around this by publishing anthologies, but I think the whole equation often breaks down for people standing in a bookstore: buying a bunch of small stories glued together in one paperback, or a whole novel—most people, I wager, pick the novel.

    Second, the mental investment. We do like strong characters and getting to know imaginary people through the course of a five hundred page-long story. Ideas are important, too, but my experience with short story is that it often leans more into exploring an idea than it does exploring a fleshed out character—that’s the realm of novels with the space to do that well. It’s not impossible in a short story, but I think you can only create so much personality out of ten thousand words. People like people, so I think we tend to gravitate towards novels about people over stories about ideas.

    Just my speculation.

    In the coming months I want to write more short fiction, I think, filling that gap in my heart with explorations of big ideas and crazy concepts. 

    I fully expect it to be under appreciated.