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.

My next book, Writing at the Wellspring is now available for preorder. The book releases on December 15. Immediately after preorders opened, it became for several days the bestselling new title in one of its Amazon categories.

Here’s a description:

“A guide for writers who welcome the dark and hunger for meaning. . . . If the page is a threshold, this book will show you how to cross.” —Joanna Penn, author of Writing the Shadow

Have you ever felt that your truest creative work comes from somewhere beyond your conscious control? That in your best moments, you’re not so much writing as being written through? The ancients had a name for this force: the muse or daemon, the hidden genius that shapes authentic art and calls us toward our deepest purpose.

If you’ve ever felt blocked, burned out, or adrift in your creative life, this book is an invitation to return to that source. In a world crowded with noise and distraction, creativity asks us to step back into silence.

Writing at the Wellspring is a guide to creativity at its deepest level. Matt Cardin, known for his writings on creativity, spirituality, and the supernatural, draws on twenty-five years as a writer, teacher, and explorer of the darkly numinous to examine the ancient idea of the daemon muse as a hidden force that shapes authentic expression and life purpose.

Part memoir, part spiritual manifesto, and part guidebook for writers and creators, the book traces the undercurrents of resistance, silence, and awakening that flow beneath genuine art. More than a productivity manual, it shows how writing can become a kind of monastic practice: a way of renewal, an act of attention that aligns with the ground of nonduality, and a return to presence that steadies us in a collapsing world.

At once personal and cultural in scope, Writing at the Wellspring invites authors, artists, and seekers to reimagine their creative lives as a path of awakening, guided by the hidden currents of genius within. It’s a companion for creators in the spirit of Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones, and Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art. But where those books focus on overcoming resistance and building practice, Writing at the Wellspring reveals creativity as a contemplative path, a way of awakening that unites your inner and outer lives in the fulfillment of your deepest calling.

“I can’t think of any [other books] that link the creative act so uniquely or persuasively with spirituality.” —Victoria Nelson, author of On Writer’s Block

This project has been a long and layered journey, involving years of writing, revising, distilling, and deepening, and it’s meaningful to see it taking its first public step into the world. If the themes of creativity, silence, the daemon muse, spiritual awakening, and the deeper currents beneath writing and life resonate with you, please consider preordering a copy.