Creativity

Everything You Need to Know About Talent

What makes multi-talented people tick?

Posted April 5, 2012

Know any creative people who have talent to spare? Douglas Eby has probably interviewed them. Eby has been studying creativity and talent for decades, posting a lot of what he's learned on his popular site Talent Development Resources. (His archived podcast with me about writing is here).

Now he's put together an e-book called Developing Multiple Talents: The Personal Side of Creative Expression. In it, Eby offers research results and insights into the various aspects of creativity, as well as plenty of quotes from the talented and multi-talented, many of whose names are familiar to us all. What's more, numerous links within the text point readers toward many less familiar people, books, and sites covering every possible related topic.

You'll find quotes from the likes of Viggo Mortensen, Edward Norton, J.K. Rowling, Carly Simon, and many dozens of others, plus links to the popular work of nearly everyone who has written on creativity, mindfulness, happiness, anxiety, perfectionism, and just about anything else that may have an effect on expressing your innate talents.

There's nothing simple about this complex set of topics, so I won't try to pull out "tips." This book is a good jumping off point to the field (to many psychological fields, in fact).

Eby himself is multiply-talented and multiply-interested, as is obvious on this page with links to his many intriguing and useful sites. A very good resource.