There's a great book I read recently called Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys To Creativity by Hugh MacLeod. It's a quick read; most of its insights are in the small illustrations (which are the author's craft), which take up roughly half the pages in the book. I picked it up in the bookstore and had finished reading it within 45 minutes.

Despite that, I still bought the book, with the intention of re-reading it and then passing it along to a friend. I still haven't been able to bring myself to give it away. It's quite a good book.

In one chapter, the Hugh talks about living in the same apartment building as Tim Burton for brief period of time in the late 1980s. They spoke a few times. During one conversation, he asked Tim Burton about pursing a career in the arts. Tim said, "If you have the creative bug, it isn't ever going to go away. I'd just get used to the idea of dealing with it."

Good advice, but incomplete: all of us have the creative bug at least part of the time. Some people have it more often than others. It's not an inborn trait in a few rare individuals, but a state of mind that afflicts us when we least expect it.

You have the creative bug. And the first step in getting used to it is recognizing it when it strikes.