James H. Skye

I think the thing I find the most interesting about this, is that there isn't actually anything specifically relevant to Aphantasia here. This is the exact way that people who aren't aphantasic also write, with a common encouragement for beginning writers being to start creating files of things to steal / swipe / imitate and to maintain journals for inspiration and novel bibles for pieces in progress. In fact, the steps detailed here correspond to a basic description of the creative process in general - not just as applicable to writing. The act of creativity has been defined as creating connections for the purpose of insight (the "aha!" moment) for quite a while now, and the whole idea of visualization being original has not been supported for a century: at least since Wallace's theory of Creativity from the 1920s. The zettelkasten method for storing notes / research was done in large part as a way of devising a system that better supported creating connections as standard hierarchical / branching notes are ill-suited: "structure dampens the possibility of combination, and thereby the generation of new ideas". And this was from back in the 1950s. I guess I just feel that this article should either discuss the ways that creativity theory might be specifically relevant to people who are aphantastic (which this article doesn't) or focus on the ways that are specific to aphantasia beyond or inside of basic creativity theory (which again, this article doesn't). Honestly I guess I was just very disappointed in the clear lack of any sort of research (especially from an author that puts forward their writing on the subject of aphantasia for a science magazine). And yes, the fact that writing doesn't share the same dependency on visualization makes it a strange subject for this particular site without further focus in general. Most things I've read on the condition seem to indicate we lack the ability to visualize not conceptualize, which is the actual cognitive process I'd imagine writing to be most directly tied to. Unless the actual objective was to illustrate this specific author's thoughts on the subject -- in which case there's a clear lack of "killing your darlings". That thread is lost amidst elucidating the steps of the typical writing process.