Imagimodesty

I wonder at times if my imagination is on life support. (I’m also getting very frustrated with typing “no” when I mean to type “on”. I’m not sure when my fingers began their revolution against my thoughts but it’s getting extremely annoying.) I’ve been toying with some sort of story about a King walking a battlefield after a brutal and bloody battle with a long storied enemy. But every sentence I start seems to be weak and without much enthusiasm. I can’t seem to see this King’s sad and lonely face as he scans the field of dead and dying like so many battlefield commanders of the actual past did before. I suppose it’s because he’s me.

I’m not saying I’m a King or by any means royal. My Irish Catholic modesty often casts myself as supporting player or narrator in my stories, but never the actual main character. I tend to follow the tried and true method of a character alloy of Dr. Sam Beckett, Indiana Jones, Jason Bourne, Jesus, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant and Sean Connery. Who wouldn’t want to be sum of those guys? They represent the best of the hero ideal and a main character should reflect that. I don’t really see myself that way so this fictional King I was trying to write about is really, kind of a bore. Just like me.  

And now it’s taken me too long to write these few paragraphs. My real life is constantly getting in the way of the fictional one I’d prefer to spend our time together in. (I’m also annoyed with constantly typing “out” instead of “our”. That’s just one straw short of total camel back destruction.)

Clearly I’m exaggerating that my imagination being at death’s door. I’m quite capable of writing story after story about nothing at all. It’s my gift. Mind you it seems to have rolled under the couch where I’m trying to get at it with a yard stick, which just ends up batting it around up further towards the back wall, but it’s there and I… can… almost… reach….