Caroline Bock's Blog: Caroline Anna Bock Writes - Posts Tagged "writing-tips"
Practical and Personal Writing Tips from the Author of LIE
RECOMMENDED WRITING RESOURCES: This is by no means a comprehensive list, but represents groups that I have participated in or taken classes with over the years— from Caroline Bock, author of LIE. More writing insights at: www.carolinebock.com
For adults:
Long Island Children’s Writers and Illustrators (LICWI) - a very inclusive Long Island group meets once a month at St. Joseph’s College in Patchogue, and features group critiques of children –young adult work. Editor visits. Very reasonable annual membership. www.licwi.org
Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators – (SBCWI) National organization for children’s writers, I’m a member of the NYC chapter with monthly seminars, annual winter meeting in January in NYC offers critiques, workshops and panels. www.scbwi.org
SheWrites (for women writers only). Terrific site -- no fee to join. As their website notes, they are the “premier destination for women writers, providing services and support for women at every stage of their writing lives.” Lots of free information and sharing here. Also writing classes for a fee offered on line. www.shewrites.com
MediaBistro (on-line and in NYC, www.mediabistro.com): daily free email on the media business, plus some excellent short-term writing classes on line and in person for fee. Class with D.B. Gilles on screenwriting is very worthwhile - I’ve take it! He has a new book: The ScreenWriter Within – I highly recommend it.
Publisher’s Lunch – daily free email on the publishing business. Key info for serious aspiring writer about what books have been sold by what agents to what publishers, what books optioned by film or television, and the scope of the deals. A subscription component of the site gives more details on deals. www.publishersmarketplace.com
AgentQuery – www.agentyquery.com
– “the largest and most searchable database of literary agents on the web.” Also the “how to write a query” section is very helpful (a “query” is a sale pitch letter about your project to a literary agent).
More for teens:
Hofstra Continuing Education (high school and adult education writing classes year round and a well-run Summer Writers Institute on Long Island). If you are an aspiring children’s writer, try a class with Brian Heinz, very worthwhile. www.hofstra.edu/ucce/summerwriting.edu
Figment: Write yourself in. A community to share writing – no fee to join. Teen orientated. Educator section too. Lots of resources for teen writers here – and for adult writers interested in young adult fiction, Find an interview with me on this site!! www.figment.com
Stone Soup: It's a magazine written entirely by children. Ask your librarian whether she has some copies you could read first. Check out their website at www.stonesoup.com.
If you wish to submit, send to:
Stone Soup Submissions Dept.
P.O. Box 83
Santa Cruz, CA 95063.
Include name, age, home address, phone number, and a self-addressed stamped envelope.
Top Writing Competition for High School students: The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards for grades 7-12. These are the top writing awards for high school students in the United States. Dramatic scripts, Flash Fiction (1,300 words), Personal Essay, Poetry, Science Fiction, Short Story are among the categories. DEADLINE for Northeast regional: is in early 2013. Regional and national winners. Scholarships for winners. More at
www.artandwriting.org
Short list of books about writing on my bookshelf for adults or teens:
1) On the art of writing: Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott about the creative process; On Writing by Stephen King and The Art of the Novelist by John Gardner.
2) On practical advice: Immediate Fiction by Jerry Cleaver, a complete writing course in one book; The Practical Writer from Inspiration to Publication edited by Therese Eiben and Mary Gannon on the staff of Poets & Writers Magazine and The Forest for the Trees: an Editor’s Advice to Writers by Betsy Lerner. Also, Poets&Writers Magazine and its website www.pw.org are essential resources.
If your school has a literary magazine, get involved. I truly began to think of myself as a writer when I joined Opus, my New Rochelle High School literary magazine.
And if you're on goodreads you know, this: read, read, read -- because writer's read.
Truly,
author of LIE
must read young adult novel
about race and prejudice in
21st century America
more at www.carolinebock.com
For adults:
Long Island Children’s Writers and Illustrators (LICWI) - a very inclusive Long Island group meets once a month at St. Joseph’s College in Patchogue, and features group critiques of children –young adult work. Editor visits. Very reasonable annual membership. www.licwi.org
Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators – (SBCWI) National organization for children’s writers, I’m a member of the NYC chapter with monthly seminars, annual winter meeting in January in NYC offers critiques, workshops and panels. www.scbwi.org
SheWrites (for women writers only). Terrific site -- no fee to join. As their website notes, they are the “premier destination for women writers, providing services and support for women at every stage of their writing lives.” Lots of free information and sharing here. Also writing classes for a fee offered on line. www.shewrites.com
MediaBistro (on-line and in NYC, www.mediabistro.com): daily free email on the media business, plus some excellent short-term writing classes on line and in person for fee. Class with D.B. Gilles on screenwriting is very worthwhile - I’ve take it! He has a new book: The ScreenWriter Within – I highly recommend it.
Publisher’s Lunch – daily free email on the publishing business. Key info for serious aspiring writer about what books have been sold by what agents to what publishers, what books optioned by film or television, and the scope of the deals. A subscription component of the site gives more details on deals. www.publishersmarketplace.com
AgentQuery – www.agentyquery.com
– “the largest and most searchable database of literary agents on the web.” Also the “how to write a query” section is very helpful (a “query” is a sale pitch letter about your project to a literary agent).
More for teens:
Hofstra Continuing Education (high school and adult education writing classes year round and a well-run Summer Writers Institute on Long Island). If you are an aspiring children’s writer, try a class with Brian Heinz, very worthwhile. www.hofstra.edu/ucce/summerwriting.edu
Figment: Write yourself in. A community to share writing – no fee to join. Teen orientated. Educator section too. Lots of resources for teen writers here – and for adult writers interested in young adult fiction, Find an interview with me on this site!! www.figment.com
Stone Soup: It's a magazine written entirely by children. Ask your librarian whether she has some copies you could read first. Check out their website at www.stonesoup.com.
If you wish to submit, send to:
Stone Soup Submissions Dept.
P.O. Box 83
Santa Cruz, CA 95063.
Include name, age, home address, phone number, and a self-addressed stamped envelope.
Top Writing Competition for High School students: The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards for grades 7-12. These are the top writing awards for high school students in the United States. Dramatic scripts, Flash Fiction (1,300 words), Personal Essay, Poetry, Science Fiction, Short Story are among the categories. DEADLINE for Northeast regional: is in early 2013. Regional and national winners. Scholarships for winners. More at
www.artandwriting.org
Short list of books about writing on my bookshelf for adults or teens:
1) On the art of writing: Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott about the creative process; On Writing by Stephen King and The Art of the Novelist by John Gardner.
2) On practical advice: Immediate Fiction by Jerry Cleaver, a complete writing course in one book; The Practical Writer from Inspiration to Publication edited by Therese Eiben and Mary Gannon on the staff of Poets & Writers Magazine and The Forest for the Trees: an Editor’s Advice to Writers by Betsy Lerner. Also, Poets&Writers Magazine and its website www.pw.org are essential resources.
If your school has a literary magazine, get involved. I truly began to think of myself as a writer when I joined Opus, my New Rochelle High School literary magazine.
And if you're on goodreads you know, this: read, read, read -- because writer's read.
Truly,
author of LIE
must read young adult novel
about race and prejudice in
21st century America
more at www.carolinebock.com
Questions and answers on LIE
I’ve been asked so many questions regarding my debut novel LIE that I decided to write up a few the most interesting questions – and my answers. If you’ve read LIE I’d love to hear your thoughts!
On the surface, LIE is about white teens and a hate crime against Hispanics. Was there a particular incident that made you interested in this subject?
In 2008, I became aware of news stories about attacks against Hispanics in suburban areas, including on Long Island, where a group of mostly white teenagers attacked Marcelo Lucero and his brother. Marcelo Lucero ultimately died from the attack. And there were other attacks by suburban teens against Hispanics-- in Brooklyn, New York and in Pennsylvania. I am not saying these were the first, or will be the last, incidences of racism in the suburbs, but it was just the moment when I opened my eyes.
At the same time, after ending a long career in cable television, I started attending The City College of New York MFA-Fiction program in Harlem. I had people from all over the world in my classes. I thought surely some writer, somewhere, should take the idea of racism in the suburbs and run with it. But then I thought: Why can’t this person be me? I started writing, furiously, and finished a first draft in about three months. So, while this story was inspired by true events, it is wholly fictional – all the characters are sprung from my imagination.
But the crime seems to be a launching off for something more. What would you say that ‘more’ is?
The ‘more’ is a key question. The ‘more’ in my head is this: What makes good people follow others who are not? What makes some people followers and other leaders? What makes those leaders be bullies or haters? Ultimately, there’s a famous quote – “All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing,” (Edmund Burke), and I kept turning that over in my head as created all these characters, who are grappling what they should do going forward, especially Skylar Thompson and Sean Mayer, the two teens at the heart of the story.
Why should teens care about evil triumphing or not?
Why should anybody? We live in a world were we have to make choices every day that affect others in big and little ways. We’re all interconnected, aren’t we? On some level? Though, admittedly, I know I made some pretty bad choices at time because I thought everybody else was thinking the same way.
What kind of bad choices?
I think I’m going to save that for my next novel!
P.S. My next novel, BEFORE MY EYES, is coming out in 2014 from St. Martin's Press! More about LIE at www.carolinebock.com.Lie
On the surface, LIE is about white teens and a hate crime against Hispanics. Was there a particular incident that made you interested in this subject?
In 2008, I became aware of news stories about attacks against Hispanics in suburban areas, including on Long Island, where a group of mostly white teenagers attacked Marcelo Lucero and his brother. Marcelo Lucero ultimately died from the attack. And there were other attacks by suburban teens against Hispanics-- in Brooklyn, New York and in Pennsylvania. I am not saying these were the first, or will be the last, incidences of racism in the suburbs, but it was just the moment when I opened my eyes.
At the same time, after ending a long career in cable television, I started attending The City College of New York MFA-Fiction program in Harlem. I had people from all over the world in my classes. I thought surely some writer, somewhere, should take the idea of racism in the suburbs and run with it. But then I thought: Why can’t this person be me? I started writing, furiously, and finished a first draft in about three months. So, while this story was inspired by true events, it is wholly fictional – all the characters are sprung from my imagination.
But the crime seems to be a launching off for something more. What would you say that ‘more’ is?
The ‘more’ is a key question. The ‘more’ in my head is this: What makes good people follow others who are not? What makes some people followers and other leaders? What makes those leaders be bullies or haters? Ultimately, there’s a famous quote – “All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing,” (Edmund Burke), and I kept turning that over in my head as created all these characters, who are grappling what they should do going forward, especially Skylar Thompson and Sean Mayer, the two teens at the heart of the story.
Why should teens care about evil triumphing or not?
Why should anybody? We live in a world were we have to make choices every day that affect others in big and little ways. We’re all interconnected, aren’t we? On some level? Though, admittedly, I know I made some pretty bad choices at time because I thought everybody else was thinking the same way.
What kind of bad choices?
I think I’m going to save that for my next novel!
P.S. My next novel, BEFORE MY EYES, is coming out in 2014 from St. Martin's Press! More about LIE at www.carolinebock.com.Lie
FISH SELL
"Fish Sell”
On seeing the trade paperback of my book for the first time
By Caroline Bock
(originally published in the Washington Independent Review of Books, 2014)
The cover of Before My Eyes hasn’t changed, but the feel of it has. Grittier. I expect it to smell like cigarettes.
It doesn’t.
I flip to the back first, as if the ending may somehow have changed.
It hasn’t.
On the last page is an advertisement for another novel, LIE, and I see that I wrote that, too.
I actually never forgot that I wrote LIE, my first novel. Though sometimes it feels like I never published anything (except that poem I wrote in third grade) — that someone else wrote all those words over all those years.
I can still remember that first poem. My father stared at it and its “tall, towering trees” published in the school’s mimeographed newspaper.
“Toots, we got a writer in the family,” he said with his kind of praise, expansive and vague. It took me a minute to know that he was imagining me older, not 8 years old. Until that moment, I hadn’t particularly wanted to be a writer.
If my father were looking over Before My Eyes, he’d ask the sale price first ($9.99), and then how many I expected to sell (a lot, maybe). And then he might ask: “Why don’t I bring the book down to Thunderbird?” He’d sell a few for me at his flea-market table in Florida where he sold souvenir T-shirts to Canadian tourists.
“I can’t promise you how many books I’d move, toots. I’m the guy known for the fish T-shirts, not books. Did you ever think of slapping a picture of a shark on any of your novels? Fish sell, toots.”
You’ll notice that there is always a mother, damaged or dead, in my novels. I’m working on writing a mother into my next book, but I may have to kill her off. My father raised me, and I have trouble with mothers.
I have never seen a shark or written about one. Before My Eyes is about paranoid schizophrenia, gun violence, and the teen psyche at the end of a long, hot summer.
It is largely set at the beach, but there aren’t any fish.
Some people glance at Before My Eyes and ask, “What age is this for?” because it is marketed as a YA novel. I wrote it with teen characters surrounded by adults who don’t see what is happening before their eyes. I think adults should read it first.
If you read Before My Eyes, you’ll immediately glean that it starts near the end and moves backward. The world is different if you think you know the answers, but you don’t.
I see the world moving forward and backward at the same time, roots overlapping one another, the trees from my first poem. I see myself writing in notebooks at 8 years old and today. My father is gone, dead now, but here with me, looking over my shoulder, talking about fish.
“Fish sell, toots.”
The trade-paperback version of Caroline Bock’s Before My Eyes is now available wherever books are sold. For more about the author go to www.carolinebock.com.
On seeing the trade paperback of my book for the first time
By Caroline Bock
(originally published in the Washington Independent Review of Books, 2014)
The cover of Before My Eyes hasn’t changed, but the feel of it has. Grittier. I expect it to smell like cigarettes.
It doesn’t.
I flip to the back first, as if the ending may somehow have changed.
It hasn’t.
On the last page is an advertisement for another novel, LIE, and I see that I wrote that, too.
I actually never forgot that I wrote LIE, my first novel. Though sometimes it feels like I never published anything (except that poem I wrote in third grade) — that someone else wrote all those words over all those years.
I can still remember that first poem. My father stared at it and its “tall, towering trees” published in the school’s mimeographed newspaper.
“Toots, we got a writer in the family,” he said with his kind of praise, expansive and vague. It took me a minute to know that he was imagining me older, not 8 years old. Until that moment, I hadn’t particularly wanted to be a writer.
If my father were looking over Before My Eyes, he’d ask the sale price first ($9.99), and then how many I expected to sell (a lot, maybe). And then he might ask: “Why don’t I bring the book down to Thunderbird?” He’d sell a few for me at his flea-market table in Florida where he sold souvenir T-shirts to Canadian tourists.
“I can’t promise you how many books I’d move, toots. I’m the guy known for the fish T-shirts, not books. Did you ever think of slapping a picture of a shark on any of your novels? Fish sell, toots.”
You’ll notice that there is always a mother, damaged or dead, in my novels. I’m working on writing a mother into my next book, but I may have to kill her off. My father raised me, and I have trouble with mothers.
I have never seen a shark or written about one. Before My Eyes is about paranoid schizophrenia, gun violence, and the teen psyche at the end of a long, hot summer.
It is largely set at the beach, but there aren’t any fish.
Some people glance at Before My Eyes and ask, “What age is this for?” because it is marketed as a YA novel. I wrote it with teen characters surrounded by adults who don’t see what is happening before their eyes. I think adults should read it first.
If you read Before My Eyes, you’ll immediately glean that it starts near the end and moves backward. The world is different if you think you know the answers, but you don’t.
I see the world moving forward and backward at the same time, roots overlapping one another, the trees from my first poem. I see myself writing in notebooks at 8 years old and today. My father is gone, dead now, but here with me, looking over my shoulder, talking about fish.
“Fish sell, toots.”
The trade-paperback version of Caroline Bock’s Before My Eyes is now available wherever books are sold. For more about the author go to www.carolinebock.com.
INTERVIEW in WRITER MAGAZINE
The Write Magazine interviewed me this month in conjunction with honoring my short story, "Gargoyles and Stars" with first place in its 2016 short story competition, judged by Colum McCann!
Here is a link to the interview and short story:
http://www.writermag.com/2016/01/27/c...
PS if you haven't read my newest young adult novel, BEFORE MY EYES, perhaps now is the time?
Before My Eyes
Happy spring!!
Here is a link to the interview and short story:
http://www.writermag.com/2016/01/27/c...
PS if you haven't read my newest young adult novel, BEFORE MY EYES, perhaps now is the time?
Before My Eyes
Happy spring!!
Caroline Anna Bock Writes
Here's to a 2018 with
-stories that matter
-time to read those stories
-drive to write (and finish) my own stories.
Here's a happy, healthy world for all!
--Caroline
...more
-stories that matter
-time to read those stories
-drive to write (and finish) my own stories.
Here's a happy, healthy world for all!
--Caroline
...more
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