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The Solution to Accessing Absent Imagination

By Ellie Coverdale

As a creative person you rely strongly upon your imagination. In fact, without it you’d be pretty lost, right? So, as writers, what do we do when our imagination does, on occasion, desert us? We’ve all been there: it’s often described as writers’ block. The good news is that you need not fret - not only will your imagination come back to you, but in the meantime there are many things you can do to stimulate what would appear to be missing imagination. Here are just a few such examples:

Do something

Sitting around at your desk waiting for inspiration to hit you is a thankless and ultimately fruitless task: it just doesn’t work like that, as Jenna Thompson, a blogger at Essay service and Big Assignments explains.

“Have you ever forgotten something really simple, like the name of any everyday object, and then found yourself getting frustrated because the more you think about it, the more it seems to retreat into the recesses of your mind. That is exactly what happens when you try to force imagination.”

inspiration

So the solution is to stop thinking about it, and do something else. The brain requires about 20% of the body’s energy, leaving 80% unaccounted for. So, get up and get moving, but throw yourself into other activities and you will be surprised at when inspiration hits. It could be in the middle of a run, or even a trip to the supermarket. Just do something, as sitting there will not help matters.

Get outside your comfort zone

It was Nancy Roosevelt who is coined with the quote that you should do something every day that scares you, to paraphrase her exact words. And she was right, because it is through experiencing new things and pushing ourselves outside of our comfort zones that imagination is truly stimulated.

“Children are a great example of how constantly experiencing new things develops imagination. To a child, many simple activities are being experienced for the first time, and this truly stimulates their minds. If you are doing the same old things, acting out the same old routines, it’s inevitable that your imaginative spark will suffer,” says Madeleine O’Connor, a creative writer at Best British Essays and Revieweal.

Read

In saying that we should get out of our comfort zones, that fails to recognize that some of the most vivid imaginations in terms of authors were formed in enacting quite mundane lives. Jane Austen is a prime example as her conservative middle-class life would not have involved a great deal of excitement, and so she sought solace in books, which took her to faraway places and really inspired her genius. Read as widely and as enthusiastically as you can – movies are great too – and keep your mind open to any possible influence. Do not narrow your horizons to just one or two genres, and be willing to explore different themes and types of fiction or non-fiction in order to stimulate your creativity.

Observe

Perhaps Jane Austen’s greatest genius as a writer, to use the prominent English author of novels such as Pride and Prejudice again as an example, was her ability to truly reveal the little character eccentricates that are notable in every person around us, but which we very often fail to recognize because we are too consumed in our own heads. So, observe the characteristics and mannerisms of everyone around you and seek inspiration in the small things that happen, and you will soon begin to see that there is beauty and interest in the most mundane of actions.

Seek another perspective

Often we are guilty of living too much inside our own heads, which mean we become consumed with our own way of seeing the world. The greatest of writers have an uncanny ability of viewing events from a number of different perspectives, and it is this kind of empathy that can really stimulate creativity and the imagination. So try to imagine events from the viewpoint of different protagonists, and this will give you a fresh approach to even the simplest of happenings.

And just write

Write things down. Write anything. Take a notebook with you and jot down the most inconsequential of matters. Wake up in the morning and write down the details of your dreams, no matter how incoherent they may seem. Just write anything, and write down as much as you can, and within the deluge of words there will be moments of true imagination just waiting to be rescued.

About the Author

Ellie Coverdale, a writer and blogger at UK dissertation discussion and Top assignment writing services ACT, loves sharing her writing tips and suggestions with her audience. She writes about many topics including education, life as a writer, and lifestyle tips. She also works as a teacher for Academized in her free time.

Disclaimer:

The above guest post is published based on the premise that it will be helpful and informative. The opinions made within it are those of the author and not of sunnyray.org. The links you may find within this post do not necessarily imply our recommendation or endorsement of the views expressed within them.



Comments:

Maira Alex says:
07-19-2022

Thanks for sharing this.



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