Writers Island - My Imaginary Life.

Writers Island, a new writers community started today with the prompt "My Imaginary Life" I'm there, so here's my slant ... different, that's me!

My Imaginary Life.

The inaugural prompt sounds beautiful with an invite to “get your feet sandy” but sorry guys I don’t have, never have had and will never have an imaginary life. Call me boring, call me odd, no don’t do that, call me a realist. I get on with life, get into it, spend no time dreaming but time planning, organising and researching how to accomplish and achieve goals. Ticking things off the lists I adore writing is the big payoff!

For me, nothing would be done if I were imagining. What a mess life would become if energy spent on an imagined life took over. What a disgraceful waste of this real, precious life we have only one chance at, it would be! Don’t get me wrong I have nothing against imagination. It's just that for me life is too short to waste valuable, never to replaced time, speculating a scenario usually out of reach. I’m here to grab hold of life, live it, use it up with gusto and not waste a nano second!

In 1978 Australian author David Malouf published a novel “An Imaginary Life” and the dust jacket synopsis reads "The Roman poet Ovid, in exile, tells the story of his encounter with a wild boy, brought up among wolves in the snow. At first the poet assumes the role of protector of the boy; gradually, however, the roles of protector and protected are reversed as the two form a curious and touching alliance." Despite being regarded by the masses as a great literary work, for me, this is a perfect example of imagination overload.

I don’t read fiction, hit me with the truth, the facts man, please satisfy my thirst for knowledge I ask. Elements of fiction are undoubtedly based on real life events posing the question as to the origin of the initial source that makes me ponder; are fiction writer’s composing on the rims of plagiarism? Once I witnessed a huge disagreement at a writers group when one person wrote a piece based the personal experience of another member. Tempers flared, hackles went up, who owned the story ... thought provoking. How could we go through life copywriting every personal experience? Imagine that?

Childhood imagination is adorable. The whimsical, the tooth fairy, Santa, the invisible friends, their use of colour and their naivety is beautifully heart warming. But when kids become adults it’s time to get their heads out of an imagined life and take a long hard look at what’s happening in the real world around them. One can only wonder if the world might be a better place?

In the last few days I’ve decided to take a trip to the US in 2008. Not imagined, no dreaming, decided, time’s right. This is a major deep end plunge. Having never travelled overseas, nor owning a passport, this is real. It’s on! The appointment’s been made to obtain the passport, the expected budget and saving plan is in place and a Moleskine notebook sits at the top of my birthday gift list where the plans, tips and all the claptrap that any virgin traveller will ever need, to pull off the jaunt, will be recorded. Maybe writers with, or without, an imaginary life might even like to meet up with this cynical, eccentric, realist, from ‘downunder’ to compare notes.

My Imagined life, nope, no way … game’s on!