Here's a jewel of a book with nuggets of hard-earned experience and advice from creative people that will inspire you.

Author Michael Toms interviews six well-known writers and one musician who all want to help you understand what they've discovered: that creativity is a birthright. That being creative is not limited to a few gifted people. That you have an inner creative voice to act on. That dissolving and reversing suggestions of doubt is possible. Toms summarizes each artist's unique message at the end of each chapter.

The first interviewee, Julia Cameron, came from an artistic family and thought she couldn't do anything her siblings were good at. Through her own "creativity expansion," she found she wasn't chained to "just writing." In adulthood she found she could also be a painter and singer. And even write a musical—without being a music student.

"It's my experience that all of us are creative," she says. "It's not something that belongs to an elite few, and it's not something that can be intellectually calibrated." Cameron warns about the "censor voice" that suggests "You can't do it"; "Who do you think you are?"; "You'll make a fool of yourself!" She regards this voice not as the voice of reason but an "internalized wet blanket" that dampens creativity and tries to keep us from "committing creativity."

Cameron also cautions readers to beware of "creative snipers": "They are usually people whom you are threatening because you are raising your own creative ceiling, which suggests they might be able to

Other recommended books:

The Artist's Way (Putnam) and The Right to Write (JPTarcher) by Julia Cameron Writing Down the Bones (Shambhala) by Natalie Goldberg If You Want to Write (Graywolf) by Brenda Ueland (a classic) Walking on Alligators (HarperCollins) by Susan Shaughnessy Bird by Bird (Doubleday)by Anne Lamott raise theirs," she says. "Snipers are always telling you things for your own good, but it's really for their own comfort."

Cameron is author of the successful book The Artist's Way, which focuses on writing three pages a morning to unleash creative thought and offers imaginative exercises to get yourself started. "A lot of what we think is neurosis in the country is simply people very unhappy because they're not using their creative endowment," she says.

An interview with jazz musician Keith Jarrett offers thought-expanding viewpoints on how to listen to music. He asks us to rethink how we hear music. To not just base it on "I do or don't like it—experience it—when you hear a new sound that's over your head—mull over it for a few days. Famous for helping people realize the "potential of the moment," Jarrett warns about the inner voice that says, "I don't want to gain anymore because it might be uncomfortable. It's too bad."

Natalie Goldberg, who writes books to motivate would-be writers, agrees with Jarrett that jumping in, keeping your pen moving, persisting, and disciplining yourself pays. Readers come to see that this advice applies to any creative endeavor.

There are many pointers in The Well of Creativity: be curious, listen, notice, observe what is around you. Seek inspiration. Use and trust your voice rather than imitating someone else. Remember that formal recognition is not a measurement of your creative talent. Find a quiet place to let the ideas unfold. Travel to be in different surroundings. Write about what you don't know. Share ideas with fellow creators who support as well as give constructive critiques. Let the creative idea unfold a step at a time—don't try to control it.

Above all, perhaps, is the big message that being creative is something primal—essential to our wellbeing and fundamental to fulfilling our purpose. That we bless the world through it.

By Guinevere Harwood-Shaw
Newton, Massachusetts