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His book "The War of Art" is one of the best "self-help" for creative people I've read.

If you're struggling to be a creative person, it will help. I think it's better than "The Artist's Way." There's certainly less nonsense.

I can recommend "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" as an excellent guide to overcoming the initial hurdles to becoming a painter. "The Artist's Way" is another inspirational guide.

The best advice I was given: Start right now! and don't give up! You will keep improving and don't be afraid to cultivate your own style. Even "mistakes" can provide great learnings.

Practice makes perfect!

As William Faulkner says: “I only write when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes at nine every morning.”

With writing (as with many things), there is this myth that you should only do it when inspiration compels you to write. But that is total rubbish. You need to create conditions so that inspiration will strike, and creating a habit of writing frequently will lay the groundwork for inspiration striking. Tyler Cowen, for example, talks about how he writes every morning - whether it's the weekend, Christmas, or anything else [1]. This is an example you agree with his philosophy/economics or not.

Other recommendations:

- "War of Art" is a fun little book that lays this idea out, and frames what's stopping you from creating as "resistance"[2]. In the end, the book can be summarized as: create and stick to a daily ritual of creation. If you do that long enough, you'll create something worthwhile.

- Someone else posted Writing Streak [3] which can be fun to use as well.

- Others use Julia Cameron's "The Artist's Way" [4] ("morning pages") to develop a "daily writing practice".

Honestly, they are all the same. No matter what you choose to do, the most important thing is consistency! Do it enough and you'll get to some level of ability and more than a few finished pieces (Can't guarantee a Nobel Prize in Literature, though, unfortunately :/ )

1: https://www.writingroutines.com/tyler-cowen/

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_Art_(book)

3: https://writingstreak.io/

4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Artist's_Way

For artists and maybe hackers, I have some friends who found inspiration through this book (it's not easy to do some of the exercises, very internal)

Book recommendation: The Artist's Way

"The Artist's Way is a workbook for anyone who is creative, feels blocked in their creativity or wishes that they were more creative. The book begins with the statement that everyone is creative and has an artist within them, and the point of this course is to recover that inner artist. It is divided into a twelve-week course, with assignments much like any semester-long college class."

http://www.theartistsway.com/

http://paperartstudio.tripod.com/artistsway/

Cross-posting from other thread but: I have some friends who found inspiration through "The Artist's Way" (some of the exercises, very internal, not easy to do, challenging)

"The Artist's Way is a workbook for anyone who is creative, feels blocked in their creativity or wishes that they were more creative. The book begins with the statement that everyone is creative and has an artist within them, and the point of this course is to recover that inner artist. It is divided into a twelve-week course, with assignments much like any semester-long college class."

Week 1

"This week initiates your creative recovery. You may feel both giddy and defiant, hopeful and skeptical. The focus of establishing a sense of safety will "enable you to explore your creativity with less fear."

http://www.theartistsway.com/

http://paperartstudio.tripod.com/artistsway/

I had to think deeply about this and particularly about a book changing the way I think about things and how often I think back to things in the book. For me it has to be Drawing On the Right Side of the Brain. It made me realize that I am more creatively skilled than I thought I was — a realization which has enhanced my life greatly. To some lesser degree The Artist's Way has influenced me as well.

Perhaps the most nuts-and-bolts useful of books for me has been John Saxon's Algebra 1 and Algebra 1 1/2 textbooks. After coasting through high-school algebra without gaining any real mastery, in my early 20s I sat down with these two masterworks of clarity and re-taught myself algebra in the space of a couple full weekends. I use this (re-)learning every day of my life.

> read about it somewhere, called them Morning Pages, or something like that

AFAIK, it comes from Julia Cameron's book, "The Artist's Way".

There's a legendary book for artists called The Artist's Way about getting back your creative mojo and one of the first things the author talks about is something called your daily pages.

http://amzn.to/ieS49z

She suggests starting every day writing 3 pages, by hand, totally freestyle stream of consciousness to help get stuff out of your head and get you back into the practice of daily creation. It's not about what you write, you probably will never revisit it, it's just about the impact it has on your bigger creative flow.