Inner speech is often said to be a by-product of motor control, the product of a forward model driven by an efference copy of a cancelled motor command to speak. The auditory imagery of inner speech is said to arise when the product of this forward model becomes conscious. This conception of the genesis of inner speech founders on some very basic questions about the auditory imagery of inner speech and about the interaction between inner speech and episodes of imagination. Further, the empirical evidence cited in support of this theory falls short. An alternative starts with a general conception of constructive imagination, which is our capacity to produce mental images (visual, auditory, etc.) of objects and events that do not exist. Inner speech may be conceived as a species of constructive imagination. The auditory imagery of inner speech is the conscious form of inner speech. We become conscious of inner speech because doing so provides targets for acts of attention. Inner speech represents speech that does not actually exist. Inner speech also indirectly represents events in the world, inasmuch as the nonexistent episodes of speech represented would do so if they existed.