A Writer’s #1 Most Important Creative Tool

So what is a writer’s #1 creative tool?

Experience?

Education?

Vocabulary?

Scriptwriting software?

Jack Daniels?

It’s none of these.

The #1 creative tool of every writer is his or her imagination.

Imagination is the ability to create new ideas, recreate old ideas in new ways, or any combination of the two.

The only limit to your imagination is your imagination!

It’s good if you imagine it’s good. It’s bad if you imagine it’s bad.

It’s as simple as that.

The imagination is either a prison, allowing us to see things that can never be and thus creating the very bars of our imprisonment, or it is the doorway to infinite freedom, revealing the possibilities of anything that we can dream.

As a child I always believed that because I could imagine being Superman I could one day attain those abilities. I still believe it. This may sound odd to some people, but I assure you that believing that it’s attainable not only feels better, it allows the door of my imagination to remain wide open.

The more you believe is impossible the smaller your imagination. I believe EVERYTHING is possible, and thus my imagination is infinite.

But imagination, like your muscles, can get out of shape if you don’t exercise it. You exercise it by imagining. The more you imagine the bigger it gets. How big can the imagination get? As big as you can imagine.

Try it. I think you’ll get some interesting results.

The point of this post is not philosophical. It is practical. I apply everything I have stated here to my writing and to my life. It leads to extremely valuable results, the two most important of which are 1) writing is easier, faster and more imaginative for me, and 2) I am happier.

I assure you I am not just imagining this.

Well, actually I am.

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