Fueled by a love of biographies about musicians and artists, Carolyn Gregoire, a senior writer at The Huffington Post, wanted to know what it was that made someone creative. So she teamed up with Scott Barry Kaufman , PhD, a leading creativity researcher, to find out. "It was a cool opportunity for me to get a better sense of what makes creative people tick," says Gregoire, "and [find] that special sauce of creativity — which, it turns out, is not an easy thing to define."Their book,Wired To Create: Unraveling The Mysteries Of The Creative Mind (officially out tomorrow ), explains the characteristics that creative people have in common — and shows that anyone can be creative if we find a way to tap into those traits. To learn more about this, we asked Gregoire what it is that sets naturally creative people apart."We believe self-expression is kind of fundamentally creative. This can take so many different forms, from the way we dress to taking a different perspective, finding new solutions to a problem. These are all things that involve creativity, even if we don’t think about them that way. So I think when we take a definition of creativity as writing a song or being able to create a beautiful painting, that’s a really limited sense of what creativity is. Really it’s the ability to openly express ourselves and see things in new ways.""One thing that creative people naturally tend to do is daydream. Creative people tend to be pretty intimate with themselves and to be particularly attuned to their own emotions, ideas, and memories. And daydreaming is this way that we can really get in touch with ourselves and let thoughts flow. It's often when we’re in that place where thoughts and ideas are coming up — but we’re not trying to control them — that those connections really take place."The biggest one is being open to experiences. This is a domain of personality which is the number one predictor of creative achievement in arts and sciences. It encompasses things like intellectual curiosity, being really moved by art and music, openness to fantasy, having imaginative tendencies and thrill-seeking. What unites these things is a drive to explore not only in one's outer world, but also in one's inner world. Pretty much all creative people are seeking out new experiences and knowledge, and are very driven to better understand themselves and the world — and to do that in a number of ways that enrich their lives, not just their creative work."