8 Clicks from Nowhere Productions ䷀

Tag: blocks and resistance

Chapter List

  • Excuse You

    Look around, pay attention and you’ll start to notice it everywhere.

    I happened to notice it the other night while we were having a family night catching up on a couple reality shows. I made a note that I should write something about it.

    Victimhood.

    You don’t fall into that trap, do you? You don’t trip over the wires of opting to blame everyone else for failure. You don’t catch on the snare of looking for external factors every time something goes wrong.

    We were watching that show—you know the one—where pairs of contestants race around the world and do challenges.  One of the teams was lagging, severely, and it was never about them. They played the perpetual victim. Other teams were picking on them. The challenges were so hard. The world was against them. Oh, I’m sure it felt good to dump their successive losses at the feet of everything and everyone else, but wow: it’s a game, it’s supposed to be competitive and challenging and stacked against you at every turn.

    Maybe, sure, it was played up by the editors of the show, but I also recognize that as a personality type. I also know that there are a lot of people with big ideas and ambitious dreams who hit a few little obstacles—and oh, will there be obstacles on the path to creative endeavours—and out come the excuses and blaming everything and everyone else.

    The list is endless, but you’d recognize it the second you heard it: someone or something is preventing those people from the win, so they give up trying.

    But the game is always stacked. The world is always working against most of us. That’s just the universe. 

  • November Novel

    It may be July as I write this, but that’s just all the more reason to wonder why I can’t seem to crack the secret writing formula that four times pushed me to write a complete novel in one month.

    For something like twenty years there was an online challenge called NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month (poorly named because it was really a borderless event, little ole me here in Canada participating). A bunch of scandals[1] left the organization which was behind the event-proper now but a footnote creative history. Yet those of us millions who participated while it was still in good standing are left with memories… and in my own case, a small stack of unedited, mediocre novel manuscripts.

    Controversy aside, something about the urgency of a deadline broke the procrastination hold that I all-too-often find myself tethered by and… well, simply, productivity resulted.

     It is a fallacy of a sort, this whole writer’s block thing.

    When pushed by something as simple as a pretend, arbitrary deadline, I found that I was suddenly able to crank out thousands of words of coherent fiction every day for an entire month. 

    Secret writing formula? Or another lie I tell myself when I sit at the keyboard that needs to be pushed aside so that the productive side of creativity can happen?

  • Doing Time

    Writers block is not myth but I am starting to think it is often a symptom of a larger issue.

    I don’t think that struggling to put words on the screen is an issue of having nothing to say, I think it is more often an issue of having too much to say… and not having anything driving one to say it.

    No timeline. No urgency. No pressure. 

    There you are, just a guy in front of a keyboard waiting for inspiration to strike?

    I have found more and more over the last couple years that as I sit down to write my 500 words of fiction each weekday that one thing has been driving my production of that volume of words: writing to a deadline has helped me overcome so many instances of block. 

    Maybe it was knowing that I need to get words in while my coffee was still hot. Or perhaps it was knowing that I had somewhere else to be in a couple hours. Could be it was knowing that I wanted to go to bed at a reasonable time. But all of it also knowing that I had a quota to meet before any of those things.

    All other concerns got pushed to the side to meet the deadline. I was doing time, writing words, and breaking blocks.

  • Respect Yourself

    I had a recent reminder that the biggest struggle in finding your creative (and likewise, your professional) voice, more often than not is remembering to respect yourself.

    Generally it is so obvious a thing when you write it or when you read it, but often it is the least obvious thought when we find ourselves mired in a situation or relationship where respect has been compromised.

    If you are one of the lucky few who is bolstered by self-confidence and unhindered by self-doubt, congratulations. Because I would wager the bulk of us need the occasional nudging reminder that when it comes to your creative hearts and souls no one is looking out for you and your interests, your time, your experience and expertise, nor you as a human being with the same attention and care as you are.

    Respect yourself.

    Guard your talents.

    Own your schedule.

    Stand by your skills. 

    And don’t work with people who either disrespect or take advantage of any of those things for their imbalanced benefit.

    But enough whinging… now go make something.

  • Performance Threshold

    For a struggling perfectionist who struggles with the judgement of strangers, the most daunting thing I ever do is share my work.

    I get it. I really get it. No. I really do get it.

    You just gotta push publish. You just gotta climb up on that stage and share your voice. You just gotta, gotta, gotta!

    It’s February and as I publish this post I have no idea yet if the Groundhog has seen her shadow, but whatever the outcome I suspect I have a couple more months of weather too cold to be outside doing creative outdoor things like sketching or nature photo expeditions. (I mean I could and I will, it’s just uncomfortably chilly.) That is to say, I suspect I have a couple more months of indoor time to write words and play music and dabble in code before the allure of summer tempts me away from those projects.

    I need to share something before the end of February. I gotta.

    The turning of a calendar page can be a motivator to step over a threshold, to overcome a mental obstacle. Deadlines, are great motivators. 

    Perhaps this one will serve to help step over the performance threshold. It oughta.