8 Clicks from Nowhere Productions

Tag: creativity

  • Loop and Loop

    Perhaps if you have been reading along, sensing that something is building here in my labs and behind the scenes, you will be wondering wherein all this creative energy is distilling.

    I am far from a breakthrough, but after two full evenings of creative musical play following the so-called completion of my musical set up, I have learned the rawest of basics about my tools.

    A looper pedal, an effects pedal, a synth, and a recorder.

    Creative play is never meant to be shared, but as with many of my other creative endeavours in art, fiction, photography, and beyond, I enjoy the act of documenting progress no matter how unpolished.

    The final step of creativity after all is performance and exhibition of the effort, and to fear such things is not a failing, no, but it is a shame.

    Here is what I created on my first two nights of kitted synth exploration. It is a mess, but it is interesting.

    MP3: Zero One Zero

    …a soundscape

    See you in February.

  • Reading Lesson

    I spent multiple hours this past weekend reading aloud.

    Call it practice.

    Call it production.

    Whatever it is, it was me attempting to create something from a skill that has never really been in my wheelhouse: reading aloud.

    Like any new-ish or re-visited skill that needs polishing, I have found that the best thing to do is just to do it… and be open to self-reflecting on the effort.

    Asking yourself: How can I make this better?

    Fighting the urge to doubt that progress is being made or to quit outright.

    I felt both, but I persevered and gave myself an impromptu reading lesson, all while building the pieces of a project that I’m excited to move incrementally forward.

  • Keyboard Reps

    Creativity is kind of a muscle. 

    I drove the kid to the community recreation centre this evening and, if only because I pulled a muscle in my back and need to rest it, I brought my computer instead of my own gym gear.

    Usually I come to this building to literally work out my body. I run on the track or do some cycling training on the bike, or do a few sets on the weight machines. I’m not claiming to be a gym nut of any kind, but I do a lot of thinking (and even writing) about the work it takes to keep your body—lungs, heart, muscles, and all of it—in shape.

    Tonight, I’m sitting here with my computer doing some writing.

    I just dropped another five hundred words into my work-in-progress novel.

    Now I’m writing this little ditty. 

    I’m working out my creativity tonight, doing reps on the keyboard, which is arguably an important part of keeping that kind-of but-not-really a muscle in shape.

    I won’t claim to be breaking much of a sweat, but it’s hard work and dedication just the same.

  • Musical Motif

    One of the ideas I have about my most recent writing project is that the end goal is not (merely) a novel.

    I want to make an audio story.

    Back as far a my university days I had it in my mind to try to make an audio drama in the style of H2G2 or Ruby.  

    I went about it completely backwards, of course, trying to improv a script while learning all the audio tools. I would get five minutes of groovy sound effects wrapped around a nothing script and then quit because I had never done any planning. I was using borrowed sounds and music in free software I had very little knowledge of how to use and making up a science fiction story on the fly. It was a recipe to accomplish nothing—except maybe learn from my mistakes.

    So I’ve been working on a story first.

    But also…

    In the last couple years I have built on the knowledge I had around music theory and audio software and have started to learn the basics of music production. I have been acquiring the tools—mics, synths, mixers, recorders, and recently an effects pedal—to produce my own soundscapes. 

    And? This week I actually wrote a song. Well… actually the technical term is called a leitmotif. It is the basic building block of a recurring musical theme tied to a character, place, group, or whatever. And… I wrote one.

  • Doodling Inspiration

    A huge part of my creative process as I work on a new novel has been sketching.

    I assume lots of authors, the kind who are also meticulous planners, make notes. I make notes, too, but I have also been using a form of visual note taking. 

    It works like this.

    I open up the next blank spread in my sketchbook, I write the chapter name somewhere central on the page, and then I start sketching out something that is a cross between a vision board and an idea chart on that page. I include sketches of characters introduced in that chapter. I sketch out objects that make appearances in the scene. I sketch the facade of the building or the stuff hanging on the walls or the grove of trees that I think I might want to mention somewhere in the story. 

    The result is that as I then go to write the chapter itself, I have not just my plan and the words that describe what I plan to write about, but I also have this rough collection of doodles and drawings that spark more connections and drive my writing forward.

    I can’t tell you how well it will ultimately work for me because it is a new thing I am trying, but so far it seems to be inking out strong inspiration every day.