Computer Glitches, Constrained Art, and Plans for the Future

My main computer tanked on me. There were complications and complications on complications. In the end, I wound up reformatting the hard drive and putting things back together. I lost a lot of customization on the computer. I also lost data. Although I should know better, I hadn't backed up my data in about fourteen months.

I lost most of two volumes of stories I had written. I lost a lot of background work. I doubt I can recreate any of that accurately.

I happen to be a fan of constrained art, at least for the artist. Not all of it is as good for the art consumer. In film, there is a constrained movement going under Dogme 95. Those making films under it have various constraints, like natural lighting and music only if there would be music in real life. The truth is that most art is constrained by something. Painting with oils on canvas using brushes? Those are three constraints. Using pastels on paper? Different constraints. Formal poetry? The form provides the constraints. Even choosing a language to write in is a constraint.

My first series of books was a science fiction alternate-history family saga. It was really about the set of genes, not about a person or set of people. The constraint was how those genes were spread, which meant through a family, and I had to find the stories based on the family members generated. I used a spreadsheet with a lot of randomization to create the characters. Lifespan, number of relationships and children, whether the relationships were illicit, even their heights. It was all in the spreadsheet. How did the character manage three wives and many children while only living to twenty-five? Must be a bigamist. The series of stories was also constrained by history. It started in the year 1700, and if one of the main family members married a historical character, his or her descendants would be different, and that would change history. That tends not to be constrained enough of a series. Over generations, it spreads out.

My second series was also an alternate history, but more in the fantasy noir genre than science fiction. Its point of divergence was in November of 1500 when a character “let the magic into the world.” But history had to go forward from there. Again, history was a constraint. There were also other constraints. I had spreadsheets to generate information here, too. We go forward to 2019 with a young private detective, which is where the first story starts. The detective has no magic, eking out a living through careful observation and logic instead. His world has been shaped by the magic and five hundred years of history. The stories had to come out of that. Again, constraints. Another constraint I used in this series was a single point-of-view character. In my first series, I used many points of view. In this one, if Jack was not there, it was not reported unless he heard about it. There were many things he did not find out until later. There were many things he reported that were not true.

This latter series is the one where I lost nearly two volumes of stories. Each volume tends to be between a hundred and one hundred thirty thousand words long and contains between five and eight stories. I still have twenty-six complete volumes, but I was not sure I would ever publish most of them. They were definitely Noir. Things got very dark. I was also slowing down on where to take the whole thing next. After losing the work of the last fourteen months, is it worth continuing?

About a year ago, I was speaking with my middle brother. Unlike our eldest brother and me, he was never interested in science fiction or fantasy. When we were talking, I mentioned my reservations about publishing the second series, if I could even find a willing publisher. His comment was on the order of, “I don’t read that stuff anyway. Why not go back to poetry? I liked your poetry. It should be easier to write a book of poetry, right?”

Well, sort of. It depends on how one wants to frame a volume of poetry. A chapbook of poems on various topics? A series of maybe twenty or thirty poems? Or even a dozen in a small chapbook? A children’s book with a series of poems about leaves? Poems outlining the adventures of a teddy bear? An epic poem of a hundred cantos with a thousand verses each? Or, a collection of a few hundred random poems?

But his suggestion was why I started the Doggerel of the Day series on Ricochet back in September and October. The problem with that was I was spending time coördinating what other people posted and not enough writing my own poetry. The other problem was finding inspiration to write poems.

I should mention that this latest computer problem was not my first. I went to Linux because it was much more stable than Microsoft. I had lost a lot of data with crashes brought on by Microsoft updates. That included many poems and databases of information on poetic forms. I do have backups on inaccessible drives, but that’s another story. The point is that I had probably written poems on every subject imaginable. I even had a series on reverse werewolves. They would only be human during the full moon.

Still, maybe I should get back to poetry. Maybe I’ll write an epic poem like Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. A few thousand pages long. Everyone wants to read that, right? I could convert my Jack the Magicless series from prose to poetry. Or maybe I’ll go back to short, observational poems. I can go back to experimenting with various short forms, too. The world can always use more funny, little triolets. Either way, I’ll probably share it here on Ricochet, so you have been warned.

What about you, friends? Ever had something that went wrong change the direction of your life? Where did it lead you?

Ever dabble in any form of constrained art? What sort?

Ever threaten to write an epic poem? How is that going for you?