Caroline Bock's Blog: Caroline Anna Bock Writes, page 12

SPRING. Tomorrow??

Raw, wretchedlast day of winter--can spring truly betomorrow?Pictures of inspiration from the NY Botanical Garden taken by my son, Michael Bock, new photographer - reminds me that there is spring somewhere -- even if it's under glass. First day of spring: March 20th. Truly, author of the new adult novels: LIE and the forthcoming BEFORE MY EYES  (St. Martin's Press, 2014)

TAKING DOWN MY WALL - ASIMOV, APATOW and DAVIES

Scraps of quotes or ideas or articles cut or circled, circumcised words--must be taken down. Must clean my office for an impending move. Here's The Wall before:




















Here's a FEW favorite quotes... FROM ISAAC ASIMOV, classic sci-fi writer: "IF I HAD ONLY SIX MINUTES TO LIVE,I WOULDN'T BROOD, I'D TYPE A LITTLE FASTER."









FROM JUDD APATOW, SCREENWRITER AND DIRECTOR:"I GUESS THE LESSON IS, IT'S OKAY TO WRITE ABOUT YOURSELF AS LONG AS ALMOST ALL OF IT IS MADE UP." 







FROM ROBERT DAVIES,NOVELIST, "THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO POINT IN SITTING DOWN TO WRITE A BOOK UNLESS YOUR FEEL THAT YOU MUST WRITE THAT BOOK, OR ELSE GO MAD, OR DIE." 






Feels like Pink Floyd should be playing in the background but I don't know how to do that --and would that be too obvious? Many more woman on the wall --  but that's another blog. Do you have a WALL?   Truly, Caroline

Does this happen when you google yourself??

What happens when you google yourself and ... 
you find out you’re a porn star? Or, at
least that’s what popped up near the top of one of my searches – not Caroline Bock –
don’t go looking there – but it’s
close enough.   
I couldn’t help it. I clicked. (But I am not including a link here – this site is visited by
people across age groups, including students. Sorry to disappoint: 
this is more a  quick
literary story of discovery rather than any other kind of adventure. You can leave now, if you must.) 
So I clicked, and I was pleasantly surprised. She has high
cheek bones and auburn hair and full lips and a rather commanding, bold, Teutonic
presence. She looks like someone who drinks lagers, recites the score of whatever game is on in the bar and has slept with the guitar player and the drummer and neither of them know about the other. She seems to be European, with a brash, ‘come get me if you can look’
of someone in their infallible twenties.  
Am I falling into fantasy with this other c. bock? I wonder
if she googles herself and ponders me with a similar speculation? Does she peer
at my writerly self portrait and wonder what am I thinking? Or, is this a
one-way mirror?
 
On my website, I have a number of page views from Russia and
Germany and I’m certain it can’t be for my novels. They must be searching for
this other too and finding me in frustration, and I wonder if they spend even a
second curious about this Caroline Bock? I
want to tell them that I am still working out who she is -- a writer, a wife, a mother, a sister, a tea-drinker, a reader of historical novels and history and young adult and just about anything else that has great characters and a story to match --but, still a work-in-progress. And yes, that other woman
tantalizes, and maybe, I’m a little bit of her too. 
 
Make sure you look for BEFORE MY EYES – in February, 2014!

Caroline

Be the first: BEFORE MY EYES, a new novel by Caroline Bock

BEFORE
MY EYESBEFORE MY EYESBEFORE MY EYESBEFORE MY EYESBEFORE MY EYESA
new novel by CAROLINE BOCKfrom St. Martin’s Press in 2014
If you are one of those people who like to be in the know before anybody else... check out Lena Roy's blog post on my upcoming young adult novel, BEFORE MY EYES. I asked her if she could "blurb" (write an insightful but eye-catching yet meaningful few lines for promotional use based on an early, early review copy. A blurb is an art in itself). And was I surprised what I got back - much more than a blurb. Or maybe I shouldn't have been surprised - she's an amazing writer - and reader!  Here's a first take on BEFORE MY EYES:     "...Bock's story begins with a mass shooting on a Monday morning, and then she takes us back to Friday, weaving the narrative between three points of view: Max, a state senator's son who is having a hard time doing the right thing, Claire, a poet who has too many responsibilities, and Barkley, who hears voices, and unravels before our eyes. Max and Claire are more worried about themselves, and although we know what is going to happen, we quickly turn the pages.
Bock isn't preaching to us about the way things should be, she's giving us a glimpse into the way things are, without sentimentality and without an agenda. Her characters are multi-dimensional, filled with both darkness and light, as we, her readers all are. She reminds us of the struggle to be human, and has us searching for our own redemption, our own path to forgiving the world for its sins..."  the complete critique of BEFORE MY EYES can be found at:  www.lenaroy.com.

Thank you, Lena!
BEFORE MY EYES will be published in early 2014 from St. Martin's Press.
In the meantime, if you haven't read LIE yet, my debut novel about race, hate, murder, and ultimately at the very end, love -- get a copy today -- if you haven't read Lena Roy's EDGES, get a copy today too!   Caroline

FREEDOM...To Write on the 4th of JULY

I just finished a new book about writing, GOOD PROSE: The
Art of Nonfiction by Tracy Kidder and his editor Richard Todd.  This is worth a read for new writers and
more established ones. Some of its gems include a chapter on point of view in
creative nonfiction as well as a chapter on “Being Edited and Editing.” The
work ends with an insightful chapter on usage and grammar, which includes a
warning against medical, political and digital age clichés including my own pet
peeve—use of “mega” and “giga” and “nano” as prefixes.  
The back and forth between the writer and the editor is what
delighted this writer the most. We live inside our heads as writers and good
editors help us take what’s inside out – freely, unwieldy at times, wildly at
other times.   
Why does this matter on the 4 of July? In too
many places around the world, people are denied basic freedoms of expression –
they cannot assembly, speak or write freely.  In the United States of America, our Founding Fathers thought
it critical to write down what we as Americans are guaranteed in exchange for
our good citizenship, our allegiance.“We the People, in Order to form a more perfect Union,
establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence,
promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves
and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United
States of America.” We wrote our Constitution down and have been debating
different aspects of it ever. And while we need to remain vigilant about our freedoms, especially in an age of easy surveillance, the Constitution of the United States
still stands 237 years later. Today, on the 4th
of July, we celebrate our freedom, and I write.


 

LIE ... LANCE ARMSTRONG...Was it worth it?

His “mythic, perfect story…was one big lie,”confessed Lance
Armstrong, the world’s most famous cyclist, the winner or now loser of seven
Tour de France races. But isn’t that what happens in myth? The gods take down
the hero, usually through hubris or excessive pride? Isn’t Odysseus, blinded,
sent on his travels when he refuses to accept his fate? We think we must be
greater than our fellow man that we possess something special, that we deserve
better, that we are fated to win and 
fairness and justice and the small ordinariness of life is for another
man.   
Some of the lines from my debut novel, LIE, what is said by Jimmy,
the instigator of a a hate crime and the star of the football and baseball
teams at his Long Island high school resonates now: there’s first place or no
place… you’re either a winner or you’re nothing. LIE revolves around a murder but
one the subthemes –about the winner-take-all attitude in the 21
century and how it sometimes faces a mythic and tragic fate for all involved. 
What does Lance Armstrong hope to achieve by confessing now?
Absolution? What about everyone that he involved and impacted by his hubris?
His lies? 
Ultimately in my novel, Jimmy is brought down—though not by his own confession. At seventeen he isn’t
ready to confess – but then neither was Lance Armstrong, he had to win first.
He had to lie to us all and win. Was it worth it? As a writer that’s what I
want to know.  Was it worth it?       
Truly, author of LIE
 
Caroline Bockauthor of the debut novel -LIE -called "Unusual and important" in a starred Kirkus Review;"gripping" in a starred Library Journalreview; "suspenseful and thought-provoking," in a starred Booklist reviewand "smart ... painfully believable" in astarred Publishers Weekly review --is now available everywherebooks/ebooks are soldfrom St. Martin's Press, a big six publisher.

Ruined, Beautifully

Ever read a book you wish you had written? That’s Jess
Walter’s sumptuous Beautiful Ruins for me. A meld of settings – from present
day to 1962, from a small fishing village on the coast of Italy to Los Angeles and
ultimately to Idaho – a mix of fictional devices from narrative fiction to faux
memoir to screenplay pitches – acts of plays-- Beautiful Ruins is layer on
layer of interwoven stories surrounding the life of Dee Moray, a beautiful
starlet on the edge of fame.

 
From a writer’s perspective lines like this… 
On selling a screenplay pitch:  
“And now she knows where she recognizes that look from. It’s
a look she sees every day, the look of someone doing the math, of someone
seeing the angles.”  
On age and celebrity: 
“…two kinds of people always lie about their ages: actresses
and Latin American pitchers.“ 
One refrain: 
“We want what we want….”  
runs through the novel and sets up the middle aged and older
characters on a path of wanting the wrong thing: money and fame. But we want
what we want so we go on destroying ourselves, and almost, almost destroy others
in the process. 
The last chapter begins with a heart-rending quote from the
writer Milan Kundera: 
“There would be nothing more obvious,More tangible, than the present moment.And yet it eludes us completely.All the sadness of life lies in that fact.” 
Ultimately, Beautiful Ruins is a story about seizing the
moment, about being happy with what is real and near and true. It’s also a love
story -- a triumph of love, a reaffirmation of what is real in this
celebrity-driven culture. 
This novel beautifully ruined me. More about this must read author at www.jesswalter.com.

Is there a novel that has
ruined you recently? 
Truly, Caroline Bock, author of LIE .
 

Ruined, Beautifully

Ruined, Beautifully

Ever read a book you wish you had written? That’s Jess Walter’s sumptuous Beautiful Ruins for me. A meld of settings – from present day to 1962, from a small fishing village on the coast of Italy to Los Angeles and ultimately to Idaho – a mix of fictional devices from narrative fiction to faux memoir to screenplay pitches – acts of plays-- Beautiful Ruins is layer on layer of interwoven stories surrounding the life of Dee Moray, a beautiful starlet on the edge of fame.

From a writer’s perspective lines like this…

On selling a screenplay pitch:

“And now she knows where she recognizes that look from. It’s a look she sees every day, the look of someone doing the math, of someone seeing the angles.”

On age and celebrity:

“…two kinds of people always lie about their ages: actresses and Latin American pitchers.“

One refrain:

“We want what we want….”

runs through the novel and sets up the middle aged and older characters on a path of wanting the wrong thing: money and fame. But we want what we want so we go on destroying ourselves, and almost, almost destroy others in the process.

The last chapter begins with a heart-rending quote from the writer Milan Kundera:

“There would be nothing more obvious,
More tangible, than the present moment.
And yet it eludes us completely.
All the sadness of life lies in that fact.”

Ultimately, Beautiful Ruins is a story about seizing the moment, about being happy with what is real and near and true. It’s also a love story -- a triumph of love, a reaffirmation of what is real in this celebrity-driven culture.

This novel beautifully ruined me. Is there a novel that has ruined you recently?


Beautiful Ruins

Truly, Caroline
more at www.carolinebock.com

Do you ever stop reading and start to write?

Do you ever stop reading and start to write? I’ve been reading a lot of short story collections trying to stretch my own writing…it’s quicker to read short stories and the writing is sometimes more telling in short form than long.

More telling: Tom Perrotta talks about point of view is switched, interwoven through many of the short stories in the preface to the 2012 edition of The Best American Short Stories – and how this was radical 20 years ago and more going back— and isn’t anymore. Big check off for me because I like to switch point of views a lot in longer pieces (see LIE, my debut novel-10 points of view) but didn’t do it in the past, wasn’t it against some rule somewhere? But now I’ve tried it in some new pieces – and it doesn’t hurt at all.

Not new, uneven, but often exhilarating exploration of character: The Book of Other People edited by Zadie Smith. Outstanding stories include: “Gideon” by ZZ Packer, heart-breaking, about a black-white romance, and the hilarious stream-of-conscious ranting of Jewish grandmother to her grandson in “Rhoda” by Jonathan Safran Foer to the story I can’t shake from me: “Puppy” by George Saunders with its two different points of views – two women at different ends of the economic divide and a disturbed boy chained to a tree and a puppy.

I’ll admit it. I can’t stop reading. I read to write. I am a hard-core reader.

Next story collection: Married Love, by Tess Hadley. What she says in the afterward resonated with this reader-writer: “I used to be nervous if I didn’t ‘know enough.’ Now I trust, up to a point, that the best part of “knowing” is imagining. If you can imagine it, then you’ll probably be able to write it.”

So here a few of my writing thoughts… notes… from reading these short story collections..,

1) the rule is there are no rules
2) we all want something new
3) even with no rules, wanting something new, we still want what we’ve always wanted: story, a way into other people’s lives because we can’t stand our own or a way into our lives to understand anything at all.
4) At the end of day it’s you knowing that you can trust yourself to
imagine and write.

More thoughts on reading-writing out there?
Caroline Bock

FIRE AND ICE - The World Is Still Here even as the bells rings in Newtown

Wind-strewn, tree branch buckled,
black dawn—the first day of winter, the last day on the Mayan calendar and the
world is still here, barely. Electricity out all night but back on –for now.
Twenty-six church bells for the victims of the senseless mass shooting in
Newtown, Connecticut. Everyone asking ‘why’ and what happens if there is no
answer to ‘why?’ I keep coming back to the serious mental illness of this
shooter, of Tucson’s, Aurora’s as much as I do to the easy access to military
assault weapons. Though on guns: Why does anyone outside of law enforcement
need to own a semi-automatic anything? Why?

And why did no one try to help this
sick young man – we now flag kids who need extra educational resources and
support them; we now mainstream physically and developmentally challenged
students; we have interventions for kids who abuse drugs. But we let young men
in their late teens and early 20s and who are most likely showing signs of suffering
from serious mental illness have target practice or buy guns? Is this how the
world ends?  
Or, (because I have to end on
beauty not pain) as the great American poet Robert Frost asks does it end in
fire or ice?    
Fire and Ice By Robert Frost 
Some say the world will end in fire,Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desireI hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction iceIs also greatAnd would suffice.     --
 
Thoughts and prayers to all the Newtown families -- 

Truly, author of LIE