You have two options for buying The Stolen Goldin Violin online:
Jim Laabs Music, a Stevens Point music store, has made The Stolen Goldin Violin available from its website. Laabs offers world-wide shipping and credit card payment. Here’s the link:
Jim Laab’s Music, The Stolen Goldin Violin
The Aber Suzuki Center at UWSP will accept payment by check. Print the order form below and mail it with your check to the address on the form.
I picked up 2000 copies of The Stolen Goldin Violin from Worzalla Publishing yesterday afternoon. We should have a way for non-local people to order the book in the next few days, so keep your eyes on this blog. For local customers, come see us at the following locations:
Saturday, May 8, UWSP NFAC Michelson Hall
We will be selling before and after these events:
2:00 Suzuki Solo recital
3:30 Suzuki Solo recital
7:30 Central Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra Concert
Sunday, May 9, UWSP NFAC Michelson Hall
We will be selling before and after these events:
1:00 Suzuki Piano Festival Concert I
2:30 Suzuki Piano Festival Concert II
Thursday, June 17, Portage Co Public Library, downtown Stevens Point
6:30 We will be presenting a short program and then doing a book signing and sale.
Books are also available at the Aber Suzuki Center office in the NFAC on the campus of UWSP.
I never believed in writer’s block. I always felt that it was the result of a lack of discipline. A writer should sit down and write and eventually he/she will work through it. I’ve come to think that perhaps writer’s blocks is something a little different.
Let me explain to you my boxes metaphor. I think of my mind as a big open space with a few boxes floating around. The big open space is where I live most of my life. When my head is in the here and now (at work, with my family, doing ordinary chores, etc.) I am in the big open space.
There is a box for my reading life. When I sit and open a book, I move into one of the boxes floating in my big open space. I’m in a different world, a fun place to be. I can go in and out of that box whenever I want.
There is a box for my writing life. If I sit down at my computer, I go into that box and stay there until I leave the computer. I can go into that box in a day-dream sort of way at other times in my day as well. I go there to meet with my characters, sort out what’s happening with them, what they think and feel about the plot, tour their landscapes, etc.
Lately, I find I don’t have access to that box. I’ll step inside, start to think about what is happening with the story, but then I’m suddenly outside the box. I’m not thinking about what’s happening with the story. So, I go back in and like a mirror trick I find myself outside the box again. I can’t seem to focus on the story or the characters or anything. I sit down at the computer and type (I’m disciplined), but everything is flat. I’m only writing what I remember from being in the box–I’m not actually in the box.
How has this happened?
There is another box floating around that has its door open, and I can’t seem to get it closed. It is the box where I keep all the unpleasantness of life: world poverty, wars, communities not willing to pay for public education, divisive government, global warming, etc. That box used to work quite well. It had a strong door that I opened when I wanted to be a good citizen, knowledgeable about what was happening in the world and my community. I would go into that box when I listened to or read the news or when I talked politics with friends; however, I could leave and close the door when the news was too painful, so that it would not interfere with my everyday life–my big open space.
Now the door to that box is open. I can’t shut it. I’m plagued by the ignorance and selfishness of mankind. We are a cancer upon the earth. Unable to shut that box, I’ve tried desperately to get inside my writing box so I can be productive, do something “happy” and maybe when I come back out, the pains-of-the-world box will have a working door again. But my writing box won’t let me in.
Which brings me back to discipline. Should I force myself in front of the computer more often? If I write flat, then I write flat. If I just stare at the screen trying to access the box, will I eventually gain admittance?
Comments? Ideas?
About ten years ago I read Girl with a Pearl Earring, a beautifully crafted, brilliant book by Tracy Chevalier. After reading it, I wanted to be a writer again. I was inspired to sit down and write, to mould a story, invent and develop characters. It took me three years, but I finished Charlotte’s Inheritance. It is not yet published, but I now consider myself a writer.
Last week I started reading A.S. Byatt’s The Children’s Book. It is an incredible novel, with a host of amazing characters, and so much information about the turn of the twentieth century. She writes so skillfully, and I learn so much without feeling like I’m being lectured at. While writing Charlotte’s Inheritance, I read other works by Byatt, and I feel like her “instructional” prose influenced that story. However, I do not feel inspired by The Children’s Book. Instead, I feel disheartened, unworthy, incapable of creating anything worthwhile. Her standard is so high, and my ability so low, why do I bother?
Intellectually, I’ve been wondering why those two responses? The Girl with the Pearl Earring remains one of my favorite books. Byatt’s new novel has not set a standard that Chevalier did not reach. Why does one incredible book inspire and another incredible book deflate?
Is it my own mood? The book I’m currenly writing isn’t progressing well. I am having trouble making myself work on it, and it isn’t growing at the rate it should. When I’m reading Byatt, I’m neglecting Olivia. Is that it? Is it something else?
Andy sent The Stolen Goldin Violin to the printer yesterday. I don’t know what sort of backlog the printer has, but hopefully we will have hard copies of our book in hand soon. I’m so excited I can hardly sit still! Now I’m jumping around!! Woo Hoo!!!
My family went downhill skiing this weekend. The first time I ever skied I was 23 which is much too late. When we went skiing last year, I worried the entire week before we went, I was terrified as I was skiing, and only relaxed when the weekend was over.
This year, I planned to stay in the ski lodge and write while everyone else skied. I brought my laptop and had a chapter already outlined in my head. And then tragedy struck! I had forgotten to bring the cord to plug the laptop into the wall. The battery is fickle and unreliable. I had to write longhand.
If there were no computers, I would not be a writer. For most of my youth and early adulthood, I wrote on paper and never finished anything. I edit a lot, and going back and re-writing and crossing out sections and inserting sections creates more mess than masterpiece. After a while, I would look at my project, unable to understand what was going on, what was meant to be there, where it was supposed to go, and end up throwing out the whole thing.
I did write on paper in the ski lodge. I got that chapter out, although the pages are a total disaster. Later today I will sort through them and type up what I can decipher–editing as I go. Then, I can keep on editing in a clean and organized manner. Aren’t computers wonderful?
As a reader, I’ve always been focused on story and character. I don’t need to be kept breathless with constant action and excitement because an exceptional, complex character will keep me engaged. However, books that have long passages devoted to setting and other descriptive narrative not directly related to character or story bore me. I discovered a few years ago that as a reader I actually just skim through these sections. I don’t read them with my full attention. I don’t care what kind of dresses people are wearing or what sort of furniture is in the room; I don’t care about the no-name people walking down the street and what they are doing; I want to find out what will happen to the real characters.
When I became a writer I discovered (no surprise) that I had trouble writing good description. Although I don’t like to read it, setting is important and needs to be handled, whether in short concise sentences or long detailed paragraphs. This is especially true in historical fiction because the reader needs to understand and connect with the environment of the story. Having skimmed this kind of narrative for so many years, I now give it my full attention.
And now that I’m doing it, I can’t help but wonder: how much of this does the reading public want? Some writers do it, in my opinion, exceptionally well: Tracy Chevalier, Philippa Gregory, Markus Zusak. Their writing is poetic, descriptive and concise. I don’t even realize I am reading setting, or if I do, it is so well written and fascinating that it works for me. I never feel the need to skim with these authors. Other extremely successful historical novelists put so much into their settings that the setting becomes a character in the novel. I admire their ability to do this, and yet the setting is not a character I care about. Although I love Claire and Jamie and their story, I stopped reading the Outlander series because I was so tired of wading through material I didn’t care about.
I find this true of modern short stories as well. I feel like I’m missing something. Most short stories I have read recently (in the New Yorker or in published collections) leave me thinking: Huh? They seem to have very little story and fairly boring characters. I don’t mean to seem anti-intellectual or uncultured. I’m hoping to have a conversation about this with people who do get it and can explain to me why they love the modern short story or Gabaldon’s lengthy narrative.
So, comment please!
In the past week, I have received two kind, thoughtful and detailed rejection letters. Both praised my writing and decried the current marketplace and economy–just the sort of rejection a writer most wants to get (if one has to receive a rejection….)
So, I want to apologize for my earlier rant about not getting replies from agents and editors. I would rather wait and get a thoughtful reply than get a quick “no thanks” right away.
I will breathe patience and faith.
Ever since school got out, I’ve been reading Oscar Wilde: I’ve read all his comedies, and I’m in the middle of The Portrait of Dorian Gray. Wilde was so clever. I’ve watched several movie versions of The Importance of Being Earnest and The Ideal Husband. You see, Oscar Wilde is going to be a minor (or perhaps major, it’s too early to tell) character in my next novel. It takes place in 1880 London and is the story of two women who trade places for a week, each pretending to be the other, and the mayhem that follows. I started writing yesterday and got a good 1000+ words in.
I’ve had so much fun doing my research, that I’ve had trouble getting started on this novel. I like to immerse myself in a time period by reading that time period exclusively and intensely. Wilde’s work is perfect, because he has a strong and unique voice. I’m trying to get his voice to move into my own head, so when I write, I write in a Wilde-esque manner.
The problem for me is balancing the immersion and the writing. Beginning to write is hard, so I’m always tempted to sit and read and use that as an excuse to delay my writing. I think that if I were able to write full-time, I would have an easier time of it. I’m good at sticking to a schedule once I have made one: maybe mornings for research/reading/immersion and afternoons for writing. Or maybe immersion on Tues/Thurs and writing on Mon/Wed/Fri. What a dream that would be!
As it is, I have two weeks until classes start again, and next week I will need to be on campus doing prep and attending meetings. So, I have what is left of this week to try and get things really going, going in such a strong way that my brain can stay focused on my story and characters and my Wilde-esque voice.
So, it’s time to log off this blog and get writing!
I edited for about 90 minutes yesterday. The work involved incorporating all my younger son had written and improving a couple of scenes I’d been thinking about. I still need to read through the whole thing one more time, fixing little things and looking for major problems. Then, it will be ready to move to the next stage.
This story my family and I have written is a children’s mystery that takes place at the American Suzuki Institute, focusing on four 12 to 13 year olds (2 boys, 2 girls) and a stolen violin. The violin is a mythical “Goldin” violin–very expensive, with almost magical qualities to it.
Both of my kids are Suzuki violinists and have been attending this “summer violin camp” for many years. They are the experts for anything having to do with music. We want to run the manuscript by the director of the Institute to make sure all the details regarding the running of the Institute are accurate. One of the main characters is an actual Suzuki teacher. We need to get permission from him to use him as a character, and see if he wants to fix any of the “witty banter” associated with his lessons.
So, the next stage will be to show the manuscript to the director and the teacher and see what they have to say.
The beauty of this book is that it has a ready market of readers: attendees of the American Suzuki Institute. Hopefully the story will be good enough that word can spread out of that demographic to the general kid-reading public.
My husband has helped with ideas for the story and, as our resident computer expert, will be in charge of turning the manuscript into an actual book. We plan to self-publish this spring and have the book ready for the summer institute.
Check back here to get updates on The Stolen Goldin Violin.
Elizabeth Caulfield Felt 