Nature has built Creativity into all animals, including humans. I agree, I can’t imagine a cliche’ worse than that. In humans it has reached a stage where we even have nightmares like dogs. We wonder about things way beyond any other animal, too.
So what is creativity? At the risk of another cliche’ let me say I have a regular life where I eat, drink, work and another life where I just think and marvel. It is this second life that drives art. This was behind the painter of the stone age who painted in pigments or just drew on the walls of caves. They must have had music too, but no way to write music. The sense of wonder drives the graphics artist, the mathematician and the musician who now knows how to preserve his music.
Creativity is dreaming. Channeling this spark of Nature into meaningful art is not given to many as default, although enjoying art is. It is a skill developed with hard work, heartbreak, and often despair. It comes down to slogging sometimes, anyway.
Once the seed of an idea for a book enters your soul, note it down immediately, before it disappears like a dream. It might seem silly, it might be like a car falling into a gully with a family inside. But you will know a good idea from a withered seed of an idea because in the first case you will perceive the halo of a story around it, like a cloud around a lightning.
After that, it is just a labor camp routine. Sitting with a computer and your favorite word processor or a pen and paper, experimenting in insomnia and depression. Because like childbirth, it is painful, until you master the craft. A painter does the same, experimenting with mixtures of dyes, or shapes on the monitor. So does the singer who strains his voice to its limits and a dancer with calloused fingers.
But the seed will grow, slowly and painfully, while torturing you. Write each step, even if it makes no sense at all. The river of of creation flows down a steep mountain, with rapids and stillness to test you.
Good luck to you, fellow traveller.