Background
Canavan notes that inspiration for her writing comes from "books I've read (fiction and non-fiction), the news, TV, radio, films, music, people I talk to — be they friends or just some stranger I struck up a conversation with. There are stories everywhere." However, the inspiration for the first chapter of The Magicians' Guild came from the Barcelona Olympics in 1992. She saw a news report which explained that before the Olympics started, trucks drove around the city gathering homeless people and took them to other cities. Later that night she dreamt that she "was one among hundreds of people being driven out of a city... by magicians." The crowd threw stones at the Magicians, as the slum-dwellers do during the Purge in The Magicians' Guild. However, Canavan threw magic instead, inspiring Sonea's actions. The basis of the book, Magicians with latent magical abilities requiring "expert tuition", was an idea she had already stored away.
Read more about this topic: The Black Magician (novel Series)
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“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
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