The Inspiratorium » The Novel

Discovering Dante’s Inferno

David Morton — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 15:30:13 +0000

It’s satisfying, isn’t it, when a book you read leads the way to others — where one opens your eyes to another topic, another author or another passion and off you go. I’m happy to report that the joy of discovery is still alive and well in the mind of this 50-plus reader. A few [...] Related posts:

Book Review:The Saint and the Fasting Girl

David Morton — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 22:04:48 +0000

It was a real honour to be asked by Anna Richenda, recently, if I would review her new self-published novel, The Saint and the Fasting Girl. As a fan of HistoryFish.net her expansive website devoted to medieval religious topics, I had been reading progress reports in her blog about the book’s publication for some time. [...] Related posts:

Inspiring Places: Barry Unsworth’s Morality Play

David Morton — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 18:35:03 +0000

Finally, a respite from the rain and the cold. The sun shines today in Vancouver, and it looks like spring, though the cherry blossoms are nowhere to be seen. The blossoms in my front yard are trying, but they are reluctant to invest themselves in this uneven weather. They look like little popcorn kernels ready [...] Related posts:

Writing a Novel: You May As Well Be Climbing Everest

David Morton — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 18:07:34 +0000

It is dark and rainy in Vancouver. Spring should be evident by now, even if we haven’t officially entered the equinox. The cherry blossoms should be out, but there is no sign of them at all. It is cold and miserable. I have taken a few weeks off work to make inroads into my novel [...] Related posts:

Writing: The Woes and Joys!

David Morton — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 07:25:20 +0000

I’ve taken some time off work to give some overdue focus to the novel. For the past week, I’ve been buried in writing, re-evaluating what I’ve done, doing new research and striking off in new and exciting directions. It’s been a productive five days, I would say, and I feel a renewed sense of passion [...] Related posts:

Meditation, Inspiration and Flavia de Luce

David Morton — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 12:00:20 +0000

I was at a meditation workshop this past weekend, and found it a gold mine of inspiration for my writing. We did many hours of meditating, and as the noise/clutter of my mind died down into the great quiet, there were these large nuggets of ideas, sitting there. For the first time, I saw the [...] Related posts:

Using Google Earth to Imagine Medieval Times

David Morton — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:00:53 +0000

Who would have thought that Google Earth would provide a temporary solution to imagining a foreign landscape in medieval times? I’m all in favour of using the Internet for research, but I didn’t expect to find answers with this great tool. I’ve been stuck in my writing for a few weeks, now. There are a [...] Related posts:

More Utopia?

David Morton — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 16:45:57 +0000

When I was in my mid-teens, I had a very good friend who was a bit of an intellectual. He was shy, quiet and somewhat of an outcast, like me. We were bookworms, and in our reading and discussions, we moved through a fairly impressive range of topics. Spirituality, the occult, politics, literature, advertising and feminism were [...] No related posts.

This blog: Keeping the fire alive vs. “Resistance”

David Morton — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 02:34:50 +0000

In the year that I've been struggling with my novel I've learned to recognize the time-wasters that capture my interest so readily. I can smell them coming down the hall. So when the idea for this blog "popped into my head," I detected the subtle metallic odour of the time-waster almost immediately. Related posts: