Consider what happens to other parts of our bodies when we don’t use them. If, for instance, you don’t use your arm for years, eventually the muscles and ligaments will atrophy. Then, when you try to do something with that arm, you won’t be able to. This is the situation that most of us are in with our imaginations: It’s not that we don’t possess a faculty of imagination; it’s that, for most of our lives, we haven’t had a chance to use it.

Exercising Your Imagination

Creative writing requires that you consistently and consciously push your imagination to create unique scenes, characters, backgrounds, storylines and so much more. While this is something many adults consider to be beyond them, imagination remains a natural human faculty one we are born with and which never truly leaves.

How To Develop Your Imagination For Writing Easily

We live in a culture that bombards us constantly with deliberately constructed artificial images: advertisements on billboards and in magazines; the fast-moving images of television and movies and of course the internet and social media. Many recent studies have demonstrated the negative effects of watching television, showing that this activity impedes children’s abilities to read, write, think, socialize, and engage in physical activity.

Effects of Mass Media

Our lives have become so fast-paced that we no longer have time to dream. Daydreaming at work or school as reported by <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0028393217302592?via%3Dihub">science direct</a> could be a sign that you’re smart and creative but to do this, the imagination needs to be in a relaxed state. When you are rushing around and under stress, it’s just about impossible for your imagination to operate as it was designed to do.

Slow-down

<ol><li> Exercising Your Imagination</li><li>Slow-down</li><li>Your work and Imagination</li><li>Effects of Mass Media</li></ol>

Identifying the Hindrances to Your Imagination

We usually don’t get much chance to exercise and develop our imaginations at work. In the highly complex technological cultures of the twenty-first century, survival depends not on one’s ability to make mental pictures, but on one’s intellect. <a href="https://www.gallup.com/workplace/245498/fostering-creativity-work-managers-push-crush-innovation.aspx"> A Gallup survey</a> of 16,500 employees found that merely 35% of workers are given a chance to stay creative at work.

Your work and Imagination

<ul><li>Close your eyes. In your mind imagine a blank sheet of white paper.</li><li>Now imagine the outline of a square, drawn in black lines, on that paper. </li><li>Now fill the square with red. Got that? Now change the color to green. Now make it yellow instead.</li><li>Then turn the square blank again, erase the page, let go of the image of the page, and open your eyes.</li></ul>

Exercising Your Imagination: Use Your Visual Imagination

You may have found it easier to picture some colors than others; that’s fine — you don’t have to do this perfectly. And if you had difficulty, don’t despair; with regular and frequent practice you can easily recover your ability to imagine.You can adopt and adapt this practice with your other senses too. Touch, Sounds, Smell and Taste.

Moving Forward

These ideas show some of the hindrances to imagination and how to solve them with exercises.

Creative writing requires that you consistently and consciously push your imagination to create unique scenes, characters, backgrounds, storylines and so much more. While this is something many adults consider to be beyond them, imagination remains a natural human faculty one we are born with and which never truly leaves. Think of it, if you can…