Write your own recipes
If you want to write your own recipes then looking at recipes that have already been written is a good place to start.
Open one of your cookbooks and look at how the recipe is laid out and what details they include. This will be a good guide for how you can lay out your recipe when you write it down. If you decide to cook something new and don't write it down then you will never be able to recreate it again.
Next you will need to decide what you actually want your recipe to be for. This might be easy as you might already have lots of recipes you use, but how can you be sure that they aren't just a recipe from a book that you are using. The best way to write an original recipe is to start off with one from a cookbook but adapt it to suit you. You could change some of the quantities of ingredients so there is more of one thing or another, or you might swap an ingredient for something totally different. You might find that you prefer a different blend of herbs and spices than the recipe suggests, if you change these when you cook then the recipe is now different to the original and you can write it down as your own.
Where people usually start with writing their own recipes is by wanting to try different things. If you cook the same recipe over and over again it can sometimes get a bit boring so people often decide to add a few things to make it more interesting. This is where using a recipe book and some imagination can help you have really interesting foods.
It is always a good idea to use a tried and tested cookbook recipe as a starting point when you are trying something new. That way you already know that you are starting with a recipe that works well and that a lot of people like. You then need to start changing some of the ingredients. Make sure that each time you cook it you just change one or two things and make a note of what they are. If you change too many things then you won't know which it is that gave your meal the new tastes that you either like or dislike. You will need to write down what you have changed so that if you want to recreate the dish you will know how to do it.
When you get more adventurous you will be able to make bigger changes to recipes as you will be more confident with what works. However, even the most confident cook will use a cookbook when they are going to cook a new dish, so that they can get an idea of what ingredients they need and how they will need to cook the food. So even as just a guideline a cookbook is a valuable cooking tool and certainly makes cooking easier as it takes some of the surprise out of what you are cooking.