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.

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.

I’m excited to share the final cover design for my forthcoming book, Writing at the Wellspring, which will be released this November/December. The book has also been typeset and mostly proofed, and it’s now moving steadily toward publication. Here’s the official description:

Return to the source of your creativity.

In a world of noise and distraction, creativity calls us back to silence. Writing at the Wellspring: Tapping the Source of Your Inner Genius is a guide to creativity at its deepest level, where writing, spirituality, and awakening converge. Part memoir, part spiritual manifesto, and part guidebook for writers and creators, it explores the ancient idea of the muse, or daemon, as a hidden force shaping authentic expression and life purpose.

Drawing on twenty-five years of experience as a writer and teacher—and as a cartographer of the darkly numinous—Matt Cardin illuminates the undercurrents of resistance, silence, and awakening that flow beneath all creative work. More than a manual of productivity, the book shows how writing can become a monastic practice: a path of meditation and renewal, a way of aligning with the ground of nonduality beneath experience, and a return to presence that steadies us in a collapsing world.

Written for authors, artists, and seekers alike, Writing at the Wellspring combines practical reflection with personal narrative and cultural critique. It invites readers to reimagine their creative lives as a path of awakening, guided by the hidden currents of genius within.

You can subscribe to this blog for updates on progress, including a preorder link that I will be providing soon:

The cover layout is by D. Patrick Miller of Fearless Literary, who’s providing book design and publishing assistance. The well artwork is a multiply iterated AI image.

What people are saying:

• “These days you could fill a library the size of a city block with nothing but creative writing handbooks, yet I can’t think of any that link the creative act so uniquely or persuasively with spirituality—more specifically with the weird and uncanny as well as the life path of personal awakening—as Matt Cardin’s Writing at the Wellspring. Cardin powerfully calls on his own creative daemon to turn the adventure of life and writing into the brand-new adventure of living (and writing) into the dark.” —Victoria Nelson, author of On Writer’s Block and The Secret Life of Puppets
• “I can’t imagine anyone reading this book being the same person at the end as they were at the beginning.” —Melanie Leavey, author/artist
• “Invaluable and sometimes eerily serendipitous—the perfect book for this moment in my life.”
  —Christian Farrell, artist/educator
• “It puts my most private, important, life-shaping and soul-shaping intuitions into words.”
  —Annalise Oatman, artist/psychotherapist
• “A guide for writers who welcome the dark and hunger for meaning. Part craft, part devotion, Writing at the Wellspring is a call to surrender control, listen beneath the noise, and create from the place where awe and fear meet. If the page is a threshold, this book will show you how to cross.”
  — Joanna Penn, author of Writing the Shadow
• “The most illuminating book on creativity I’ve read in a long time. I consider it the third essential tome in a ‘trilogy of creativity,’ made up of The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, and now Writing at the Wellspring by Matt Cardin.”
  —Clint Watson, founder of BoldBrush
• “This book’s understanding of no-self makes it especially important to any writer ready to see through the self illusion and realize the freedom this brings to any creative work.”
  —Katrijn van Oudheusden, author of Seeing No Self

(You can read more early reactions here.)