8 Clicks from Nowhere Productions

Tag: blogging for fun

  • Eight Clicks

    No one has yet asked, but it’s about time I explained: what’s in a name? What’s in my name, to be exact. 

    I started writing creative fiction under the banner of “8 Clicks from Nowhere” a few years ago. Where it emerged from is not a piece of inspiration that derives meaning or clarity from much anything tangible nor from a deliberate plan. It just is.

    An 8 looks a bit like a B, the first letter of my first name.

    Clicks are webby.

    And if I claimed to be anywhere but the middle of a creative nowhere, I’d be exaggerating.

    Nowhere, you ask?

    I have friends who might eagerly disagree with that sentiment if they thought I was exclusively referring to this physical place. Our city, as much as it would hardly qualify for a shortlist of creative hotspots of the world, is neither a slouch for creative souls. 

    But yet I have often felt a pang of regret that while I live geographically in a place that is just okay for creative collaboration, I definitely live mentally, emotionally, spiritually in a place that is an oasis in a deadly dessert of creative isolation.

    I have long struggled to find a kindred spirit of the kind who might dig deep into the fertile soils of imagination where I tend.

    It is a lonely creative space.

    It has been nothing short of a lifelong state for which I have no clear remedy.

    It is, then, a state of creative existence I have embraced in my techie, webby name, finding myself as I do 8 clicks from nowhere in particular.

  • Just Because

    This daily public affirmation has a blog.

    Oh, so you’ve figured it out? A little more than forty-odd posts into my persistent writing of these little public missives about my creative explorations  right here every weekday and perhaps you are sitting there pondering the point of two hundred words of indulgent affirmation.

    I could justify it. I could try and convince you that there was some marketable value inherent in such a prospect, despite that most pursuers of profit have moved onto bigger platforms. I could point at the personal brand value of exploratory concepts in words and sounds and images. I could brag about some hidden big-picture strategy towards a long term personal creative goal.

    I could. I won’t. It would all be a lie.

    Why do musicians play scales?

    Why do runners log training runs?

    Why do chefs trial recipes?

    Why do dogs howl at the moonlight?

    The answer is practice. The answer is habit. The answer is instinct and drive and compulsion to create and make and share and then makes some more.  The answer is doing without expectation of audience or purpose or influence or flex. The answer is accountability to self and ideas. The answer is human and even more than that, the answer is universally personal.

  • Warm Ups

    Oh sure, you read this and ask: what the heck? My imposter syndrome flares up like a torn ACL in the middle of a marathon whenever I hit publish on one of these posts.

    All sorts of people are filling blogs, podcasts, video channels, and social media feeds with unsolicited creative insights and rando advice, so much so that when I decide to do something (if nothing else) parallel to that effort it sometimes strikes me as a bit “influencer” —and not in a good way.

    I’ve been writing here routinely for a little more than a month now, tho, and I want to let anyone reading know that if motivations are worth anything at all, I think mine are leaning towards the innocent and genuine.

    I’m not necessarily trying to change your mind, or generate revenue, or glaze clout, or whatever the kids are saying these days. I’m largely using this writing as a warm up, a kind of public morning pages. I’m writing for the sake of writing, and writing metaspective gloops to throw up on a scheduled, deadlined blog is to creativity is as to doing stretches before that aforementioned marathon: not crucial, but a good idea.

    It may feel like I’m jabbering on without any solid bonafides about these topics, but I do think I have something worth saying, imposter syndrome be damned.  And a couple hundred words of jibber jabbering is just what the doctor ordered to my brain limbered up for more important writing.

    Plus, if it turns out to be something useful… it’s already been shared for the benefit of you, too.

  • Ad Naseum

    I gave my Kid a bit of advice that might have helped her pass her high school English class. It went something like this: when you are writing an essay, first make your point, then make it again, and then loop back around and make it one more time.

    Saying the same thing different ways three times may or not may be some secret formula for high school essays, but it boosted her grades significantly when she started following it.

    That advice didn’t come from nowhere. 

    Saying things on repeat is how we emphasize their importance.

    Repeating the same idea over and over again gives it weight in the mind of the reader.

    Ideas ad naseum might be stylistically clunky, but making multiple passes with the point across the audience, bluntly or otherwise, makes sure that it sticks.

    I bring this up because I have been reading through my past posts on this site and trying to tiptoe around retreading old ground in new writing… but that is probably not a great idea.  

    Avoiding repeating the same idea has a big negative side effect: it assumes that I got it perfectly right the first time I wrote about it. It assumes I have nothing more to say to refine the idea. It assumes that everyone understood it on the first attempt.

    All that is to add, if something you read here seems familiar then maybe that’s on purpose.

  • One Month Incremental

    So, yeah. It’s been a month. Can you believe it?

    Oh, right. I didn’t mention it before today.

    Thing is, I haven’t really been promoting or sharing this blog yet as I built up something of both a back-catalogue of posts and some project momentum, but I thought it worth calling out that after one month of posting every weekday I have… tada! One month worth of posts!

    If you keep reading, you will learn one big theme from me: I am a big proponent of a common idea called incrementalism, the notion that big things don’t happen all at once, but rather by chipping away at a problem with steadfast effort and persistence.

    Writing a little bit each day.

    Mastering a new talent by honing one new skill at a time. 

    Practice, repetition, and patience. 

    Incrementally, bit by bit, line by line, word by word, anything can be done. Well, probably anything… within reason, y’know.

    The steady drip of water can wear away a stone after a long enough time. A person can wear away at a problem with the same incremental effort and patience. 

    And if nothing else, writing every day can build a pretty solid collection of blog posts, even after just one month. Check. Mate.