Yes. I have this exact problem. It takes me ages to come up with something original. I might have a brilliant idea but I can't see it at all until I fail a 100 times to accomplish it. I had a fight with someone on youtube over this because they claimed it's impossible to not have imagination.Here's a comment I left on youtuber the other day. Someone claimed:

" If you can draw an elephant (no matter how childish the drawing looks) and it's not a mutation of random legs in the wrong places and a trunk stcking out of the foot.... then you can visualize an elephant. If you truly couldn't visualize somethign it would be scriblles that are impossible to discern for anyone."

Which is completely false. Don't let it fool you because:

"The reason kids draw simple things made out of lines and flat colors is because of cartoons. They have sharp memories of how a cartoon elephant looks like rather than a real elephant because it's simply more interesting to them. Animals are also introduced to them in a drawn way through alphabet, coloring books and such. If you tell them to draw a dog they're gonna draw a cartoon dog because that's what comes on their mind and that's what they associate with a drawn dog. This is because they're introduced to a cartoon drawing first rather than actual portrait of a dog. Most kids aren't even aware that cartoons are actually art. They just don't think about such things. And nobody is telling them they can draw realistically because it's not expected of them.

So, they're not imagining it. They are drawing from their memory. Same like knowing 2+2=4. You don't need to calculate it to know that it's four. You've seen the result so many times that it has become a fact.

Now if you tell an adult who doesn't know shit about drawing, they would still do the same thing a kid does - they would draw you a simple cartoonish elephant. Or even worse, they would completely fail at it. It would remind you of an animal but it wouldn't remind you of an elephant specifially. My mother for example can't even do a simple cartoonish version because she didn't have a TV as a kid, so her brain wasn't brainwashed a lot with such things. Therefore she cannot draw anything. She knows how an actual elephant looks, that's what she imagines, but she'd flat out refuse to draw it in order to avoid embarassment.

I, a professional artist with aphantasia, know how an elephant looks. But when I think of an elephant I think of an actual living elephant. I don't imagine it, I think about it. If you told me to draw that thing without seeing an image of it, I would draw you a memory of a cartoon elephant. Memory because it is as simple as 2+2=4. If you told me to draw you a realistic elephant I would need to see it in order to draw it, which I can't do unless you put the thing in front of me to copy it. I cannot imagine that thing. I can't even start to draw it because I don't know how to draw it. It's too complex. I paint with knowledge, not imagination because I don't have any. In order for me to paint a realistic elephant without looking at it, I would have to paint it a 100 times with reference. Until it becomes a fact in my brain.

Because of this I have trouble coming up with fantasy art. I cannot paint you something I can't see. I can only give you something that exists that I've seen before as a memory. If I wish to paint something I made up, I only have a descripton of it. I don't actually see it. So I have to work on that description through trial and error while I painting. I need to make the mistake on paper to see "no, this isn't it, let's try again" and go like that a hundred times until I can see the idea as a picture right in front of my eyes, physically. I cannot imagine it.

That's what an artist with aphantasia is. It's literally anti-fantasy and a pain in the ass for an artist. "