Saturday 10 October 2009

My Life in Tetris



Recently I've been playing Tetris. Yes, I know - it's 25 years since it came out and everyone else got hooked. I never claimed to be ahead of the trends!

Tetris is a good metaphor for my life right now. (Maybe it's a good one for everyone?) These random odd shapes fall into your life and you've got to try and fit them together in a way that makes sense before you become overwhelmed. Every so often things speed up and you panic. With luck and experience and focus you can just about keep things maneagable but you're never really in control. And you never really win...

These last few months we've had some odd-shaped blocks thrown at us with increasing speed. On Monday Mr Ashbless starts his new job, which means we've been running round trying to prepare for it and catch up on all the jobs we needed to get out of the way - like emptying the attic. Our life as a couple is about to change radically, and I'm just hoping we can cope with the new pattern.

Now that things are about to go quiet, I really do need to get back on with my real work. I've got so much writing to do...
  • Corrections and rewrites for my e-novel Heart of Flame to go to CatScratch Press.(The editor called me a Saint! I don't feel very saintly, believe me.)
  • Finish vampire novel Red Grow the Roses.
  • Prepare subs and go look for an agent. I can't put it off any longer. 
  • There's a new paperback Cthulhu-mythos anthology gone and put a call out that I desperately want to sub for.
  • I've got to sort out the miriad files of all my existing fiction that we managed to rescue from floppy disks. Yes, floppies! I'm not totally sure I still have an electronic copy of Cruel Enchantment -which is very very bad...
  • I've got a 10K erotic story that really ought to go looking for an e-publisher.
  • And then I can think about writing some new short stories for anthologies.
  • And in the distant future, a new book...

Oh my.
:-(

2 comments:

Craig Sorensen said...

You've got your hands full, and a new diet to boot...

I remember Tetris.

My game was "Pipe Dream" (I think that was the name) which I used to play on my old 286 computer. Start the game, clock ticks and you race to build a pipeline. I used to hate it when I'd get like five elbows of the same shape in a row.

Games as metaphors for life.

I can relate.

Janine Ashbless said...

Pipe Dream sounds addictive!

Another old game I've resurected is Shivers, which we first played back in 1995. It won't run on a new computer so we've got the old one hooked up! It's a puzzle game where you have to explore a haunted museum and I luuuuurv it.