Two months into its existence, here are some enthusiastic comments from various reader reviews of Writing at the Wellspring:

• “It easily earns its place on my shelf of texts that have challenged and changed how I think about writing and the creative life.”
• “What I’m thoroughly enjoying is the way Matt Cardin weaves those deep, existential questions in and out of the practical, grounded realities of writing itself…This is a book that doesn’t just talk about creativity; it inhabits it.”
• “Matt has put into words things that have been alive in me for a long time, but which I have never articulated myself.”
• “There is potential here to change your life…Cardin’s writing stirred something dormant in me.”
• “This is definitely more than a self-help book on creativity. Matt Cardin’s range of scholarship, casual reading, philosophical spelunking and theological scholarship here forms into one single vision…If Colin Wilson and Krishnamurti and ST Joshi had written a tome on the essentials of creativity, it would be something like this.”
• “It was incredible finding an author able to describe how to unlock the skills I’ve been working on even further.”
• “This book is by far the best book I have read on creativity. I hope it will reach many people and help them freed from creative block, procrastination, paralyzing self-doubt, and perfectionism.”
• “This isn’t a how-to book about writing. It’s a book about why writing matters, and what it’s actually touching when it’s real.”

You can buy the book anywhere.

A couple of months ago, before Writing at the Wellspring was published, I entered it in the annual nonfiction book contest held by BookLife, a service of Publishers Weekly. The final outcome remains to be announced, but each entry receives a report from a professional BookLife critic. The one for Wellspring arrived recently, and the response was highly positive toward both the book’s content and its prose:

Plot/Idea: Writing at the Wellspring takes a refreshing approach to the craft of writing by recentering on the ancient concepts of the muse (or demon) as a force of inspiration, perseverance, and passion. Less a work of practical advice for writers, Cardin’s book is a philosophical treatise on creativity, its purposes, and its mysteries.

Prose: Cardin’s prose is at once academic in tone and richly lyrical; the subject matter and the wealth of references and allusions make for invigorating reading.

Originality: In a sea of titles offering tips for outlining and scaffolding a piece of writing, Cardin gives readers permission to embrace the beauty and uncertainty of the creative process, while pulling from a primal source, and arriving at a place of personal and/or spiritual renewal.

Character/Execution: Cardin balances autobiographical material with literary history, philosophy, and mythology. Writers who may feel they have lost touch with ‘the muses,’ but are discouraged by more conventional writerly advice, will be emboldened to ‘write into the dark.’

I especially appreciate the accurate characterization of the book as as “a philosophical treatise on creativity, its purposes, and its mysteries.” If this description resonates, Writing at the Wellspring might be a book you’d enjoy. Learn more about it. Or jump straight to ordering your copy.