There was this book written about the association between manic depression and creativity:

http://www.amazon.com/Touched-Fire-Manic-Depressive-Artistic-Temperament/dp/068483183X

Just speaking generally, it has been documented that neurology patients with left side brain damage sometimes become very artistically creative after their injury or illness, even where they were not creative at all before (here is one instance). The left lobe is the logical deductive and impulse-inhibiting center of the brain, while the right is more free associative, imagistic, impulsive. What do lots of mental illnesses involve? Disinhibition and free association rather than logical planning and assessment of situations. So it makes sense that creative people might naturally have a bit less left dominance than most people do, making them seem a bit off (or way off) compared to the norm.

Back on topic...

That PDF was a good read. It's interesting that although she wrote it from the perspective of an author, she says that the "morning pages" method should help artists in other fields as well.

I wonder if this has anything to do with something I experienced: looking back, I remember that in the period when I was most consistently creative at music (late 2006, about four years ago), I was also doing lots of other creative stuff. I was taking a bunch of photos, messing around with abstract images in Photoshop, and writing a lot -- in addition to making music. So I figure either I was just more creative in general because of some non-artistic factor, or maybe getting into that "habit" of creativity in lots of domains helped me to make more music and caused me to be more productive than I've been before or since.

Strangely, I've found this to be true for myself.

I tend to be super creative when I'm angry/upset. Its a rather noticable difference actually.

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