"Impairment of Imagination"

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I think about myself as Creative. But I generate only new ideas.

This is a really hard one because by "imagination" they could be referring to so many different things, and I don't know which ones they actually mean.
They could mean problem solving, or imaginative interpretation of meanings (like in conversation, like maybe taking things literally is the opposite of imagination in that area) and lack of imaginative communication (coming up with good things to say instead of just giving straightforward answers, etc) OR they could really mean coming up with stories and unique ideas and designs and stuff. Or something else that I haven't thought of. Or maybe all of that, who knows.
And I also don't really know where "imagination" starts and ends during the process of creating something.
MAYBE THAT'S CUZ I LACK IMAGINATION IN INTERPRETING WORDS.

i relate to this a lot...in terms of my own writing

Yeah. Me too.
I would still classify it as imaginative though, even if it is eclectic and derived from other sources. this was one of the issues for me with my paintings.
I do know it is also the way many writers construct their plots and characters and the structure of their works.

Postmodern Theory even goes so far as to say nothing is original.

I know with me, my rich fantasy life comprises my special interests and is always grounded in these in a very solid fashion.

Impaired imagination? Poppycock!

I live another whole existence in my head, and it's fantastic.

I don't really understand the word Poppycock, it just sounds as ridiculous as the idea.

I am totaly awefull at coming up with something original, in highschool I was asked to right a fictional story, but I think that copied too much off some fiction I liked, though I did have some other ideas, to expand, but it would have been too big to establish it.

I liked certain ones so much I started mixing them together, and though it is hard to come original perse, I have worked it so much that it is becoming it's own, and I wish that it will one day it could be publicised. Some of the big ones I have copied have been mythology, largely greek and taking inspiration from other fiction and hopefully bending it enough. I have spent hours trying to and even managing to make interesting conections between seperate myths and fiction, and even tie it up scientificly, well I took Chemistry in highschool. Lately I have been looking at the interaction between diferent cultures and trying to adapt characters of different cultures, even a documentry gets me thinking.

And I even started some other imaginative things. I like to think that with a bit of tweaking I can come up with good things, but it has shocked and anoyed me when I find other stories useing idea that I had also come up by myself.

This describes my world quite perfectly, although I do agree that that is the way many writers structure their work. Like, the baby farm on Solaria, for one thing is actually kind of the farms in Brave New World or something. Or like science fiction is most in the future, alternate future, aliens, stuff like that. And then, of course, those legal disputes over stuff like Harry Potter. Something had to influence their work, like that she was a fan of certain authors and stuff.

Well, on Wikipedia, the definition of "creativity" includes not only coming up with wholly original content, but also "new associations of the creative mind between existing ideas or concepts." I guess we really are being imaginative then.

I keep hearing about this in relation to aspies, my only experience with trouble with imagination is that I always thought it would be easy to write fiction until I tried it...I was drawing from real life but couldn't change one thing because of my conviction that changing even one detail would change the whole story...it was excruciating so I gave up on it.

well, that is exactly what i would agree with.
And we ARE good at making novel associations and connections and I think this is why there is so much fertility in the autistic mind. It may be more specific and static and concentrated, but this leads to really interesting connections and ideas between our various areas of interest. That is how it is for me, anyway.

Everything is derived from other sources, form the archetypes adhered to in Harry Potter, through to the totalitarian models used in both Animal Farm and 1984 and even Huxley's Brave New World. I'm reading all of Roberto Bolano's translated writings at the moment and there is no doubt he re-invents the structure of the novel in 2666. i like him because of the unusual associations he makes, and yet I can also see where his work adheres to the usual "fiction" model.

I also like his writing because he is an autodidact, who openly questions the mainstream Chilean literary establishment (including magico-realist darling Isabelle Allende) and because he understood that doing something really creative did not necessarily require jumping through the usual career hoops of college and scene etc. He talks about his early dyslexia and the fact his writing was born out of life experience and that to me, is exciting. Often it is a case of old ideas with a new or novel twist. I see this in so much music and art. At present in my country, the biggest female contemporary artist is making art that could have rocked right out of the 70's.
I suppose one has to ask if originality actually truly exists?

Is originality required, or is it novel and new associations between things?

I've always thought of myself as having a good imagination, because I frequently make up stories in my head,and I'm pretty decent at writing stories and poems. However, now that I think about it, I'm not so good at applying imagination to practical matters, and that tends to present as an extreme lack of spontaneity and flexibility in daily life. Maybe I do have an imagination impairment.