VinceT

Oh, have I been away a while or what?

It’s been a furiously busy year.

What more can I say?

It started with the publication of Family Rules and, alongside that, a poetry collection, Garbled Glittering Glamours .

Then, by February, I’d finished my first original screenplay, Team Building – which has subsequently been through 7 revisions and is very, very close to its final spec version – now the shopping starts.

I ended up in March without a story in mind and had a little panic – it’s a long time since I was empty like that.

But I needn’t have worried.

I put my faith in the universe and, sure enough on April 10th, heard a story in the local press which immediately set my synapses on fire. On April 11th, I wrote the first word of Escalation and four months later, completed the novel. I have never written a book so quickly and with so little need for revision – and I have seldom had such an easy, fun-filled time writing; practicing my craft. Escalation will be published in December and, if all goes to plan, will sport a cover by none other than the outstanding Robert Edmonds of Vancouver, Canada – he’s the mad, bad dude painting up a storm in the video for Sex With Strangers song, We Want The Fire.

At the same time, I collaborated with James Patric Moran and Timothy Quinlan to adapt Family Rules for film. The resulting screenplay for Inventing Kenny is really, really good

[even allowing for my biased opinion]

and I’m ridiculously optimistic that Kenny will find a home. He’s out being shopped in Hollywood at the moment, and a couple of weeks ago, I was in New York at a pitch-fest aimed at getting an option on the book and screenplay – still waiting to hear back on both routes.

And, for the record, I HATE waiting.

Still, the revisions to Team Building have kept me busy.

And the new story, Dare Ya, is beginning to pick up steam – screenplay or novel, I don’t know yet, though I’m leaning towards a novel which I’ll then adapt with the boys.

Oh, and of course, there’s Escalation to adapt as well.

And the 4-part series that I’m adapting from Karaoke Criminals .

So, all in all, it’s been a year of stories – perhaps the most important one of all being that of my own story – I am a commitment to making a life of story-telling.

Join me here

[over on the right… Look! A button!]

or on Facebook as Vincent Tuckwood – Story-Teller

[over on the right… Scroll down… Look! A Facebook Like box!]

This commitment is only going to amplify.

Peace, and thank you for reading. You have my love.

It’s a strange grief to finish a work of art and know that you’ve set it free to stand on its own two feet. This conception, this gestation, this nurturing, all leading to this day when it’s done.

Vincet.net has been quiet these past weeks as I’ve written, rewritten and polished a new, unexpected novel – Escalation. This story truly was a gift, written from idea to completion between April 11th and August 26th. My typical multi-year novel-writing span condensed to 4 months; the rewriting, previously laborious and turgid (with way too much attention to detail), now like polishing a few rough edges. The writing has focus, an intensity that I relish and, most of all, characters that think, decide, act and speak as real people.

These people I’ve lived with for months. These people I’ve loved, hated, nurtured, constrained. These people.

And now they’re going to live with other people.

Leaving me with that strange mix of happiness, pride and remorse.

And the ever nagging critic that says other people just won’t ‘get’ them.

Like any parent whose kid has left home, it’s up to me to redesign life without them. And those of you who know me even a little, know that I’m already there.

Escalation will be my fourth published novel and, in the near future, I’ll be taking it into screenplay adaptation – it’ll make a fast, absorbing film.

Team Building (an original screenplay – think ‘Lord of the Flies’ meets ‘The Social Network’) is rewritten and finalized for shopping – that long process will begin soon, a new mountain for me to climb.

Inventing Kenny (a screenplay adaptation of my novel, Family Rules) is already out for review with agents in LA.

Dare Ya (an original screenplay) is underway, structured and mapped, and about a third fully written. It’s a fun story, ‘Kickass’ meets ‘Good Will Hunting’.

Karaoke Criminals (a screenplay adaptation of my novel) is structured for a 4-part series. I’ll start writing the script for that soon. It’ll remain a UK-production (it needs the London!) and, in my wildest dreams, the BBC will grab it with both hands!

And then there’s music: the band, Monkey68, are in fine fettle, booking our Fall/Winter/Spring shows at the moment, and on October 1st, I’m playing New London’s Bean & Leaf Café as part of the acoustic Sinners Circle series – show starts at 7.30pm!

So, am I grieving Escalation? Of course. I’m human.

But I know from all my previous work, that the happiness and pride will long outlast the remorse and sadness. Novels, songs, stories, they all take on their own existence just as soon as they are shared. They become something meaningful to someone else, and that meaning may have little, if anything, to do with my original intent. And that’s fine. That’s art.

But I’ll take this moment of sadness. Just for me. Just for a moment.

Be well, Escalation, make your way in the world. Everything’s going to be fine. I love you.

Things have been a little quiet here at VinceT.net of late.

Being on vacation has something to do with that (:o) but also, the good news I guess, is that I’m half-way through a new novel. Tentatively titled ‘Escalation’

[though I know that my last novel, Family Rules, went through three titles before I arrived at that, so I wouldn't hold any hope for the new one to appear under Escalation!]

the story took me completely by surprise. I’d started the year feeling a little lost because, for the first time in a long time, a creative venture wasn’t pushing to find release – I’d just published Family Rules and Garbled Glittering Glamours, a veritable buzz of activity which left me tired but fulfilled. I was filling my time looking at screen-writing techniques, movie structure, etc. Partly because I was bringing my first script, Team Building, to a finish, partly because Family Rules was entering process for a screenplay adaptation

[pre-emptive thanks here to Timmy Quinlan and James Patric Moran]

but mostly because when it comes to creative process I’m a learning monster! So, with my head full of acts, sequences, heroes and archetypes, when I caught a local news story in passing I was amazed at how quickly the skeleton of the new novel blossomed out. I’m about 45,000 words into Escalation at the moment and the writing is very enjoyable.

And yet.

And yet, I’m feeling… What is it?

Down? Sad? Demoralized? Melancholy?

A bit of all of those, I guess. But it’s darker and pulsing.

I write to be read. When I don’t receive feedback I very quickly fill the void with a story of “no-one’s reading” – I know this isn’t true but the written medium places distance between artist and audience.

It’s different to my other abiding creative route, music, where the act of playing, alone or with a band, is shared energetically with an audience – sometimes dancing, sometimes listening, sometimes talking throughout the whole show (:o) they’re at least living and breathing there with me – and changing something in my energy can cause a tangible change in the flow between us. Writing is solitary, I have to pre-empt that energy long, long before it’s going to happen.

We write for ourselves; to reinforce something in, and to, ourselves.

Of my published novels, two were written from a deeply intuitive place – Do Sparrows Eat Butterflies? and Family Rules – in the process of writing them, like the best songs I’ve written, I was only partially aware of what I was creating, flowing in and among the threads of the story, discovering the characters, events, and even unseen parts of myself. Karaoke Criminals, and now Escalation, are more structured, a conscious act of story-telling. This doesn’t make them lesser art, just a different experience. Reading my collected poetry of the past couple of years, Garbled Glittering Glamours, I’m able to remember times, places, and emotions that filled each of those writing moments.

I love writing. I love discovering the story as it threads its way through and around me.

But right now, I’m finding myself questioning whether anyone is reading. It’s a mixture of anger, resentment, sadness, frustration.

[none of it linked to money, sales, royalties or material success, aside from that they are indicators of the reading - we artists long ago gave away dreams of sustenance through art]

I write to be read.

And when I think no-one’s reading, it’s all too easy to fall down the rabbit hole. Particularly when that no-one is a friend.

I always buy CDs by friend’s bands, I always do whatever I can to encourage their process. I try to get to their gigs. I’d buy their book, if they were writing. I do it because I love them and love the fact that they’re doing what they can to make the world a better place.

But I know how many people have read my books.

And, but for a small number – you know who you are and have my complete, utter, and endless love – my friends don’t appear to be reciprocating.

Which is where the sadness comes from.

If you write, paint, sing or create in any media, you know how lonely it is; you know the vulnerability of the act. When a little voice whispers in your ear that even your friends don’t care to support you, it’s an awful, demoralizing vacuum in which to try to create.

[if you make music and have ever played to a near-empty room, take that feeling and multiply it by many, many, many times and you won't even get close to writing when demoralized]

But create we do.

We will.

Or let me personalize that.

But create I do.

I will.

Because I can’t not do it.

And, my friends, would that you were as generous in your feedback as Lorain, who commented on Do Sparrows Eat Butterflies? I’m honoured and humbled by her gift to me. In the meantime, I’ll keep on doing good by you, I’ll keep encouraging you to be vulnerable and to make the world a better place. But I won’t be waiting for you to do the same for me.

And now, I guess, I’ll see how many of you have read this far.

Excuse my
outburst
It’s done
It’s over
I’m balancing
love
with hope
for my future
I’ll see you
tomorrow
on pages
and silicon
thank you
for reading
you have
my love

If you read, please let me know; writing is a lonely place, made better by even the shortest of visits.

When we moved to New York from the UK in 2003, we found ourselves in a (relatively) sprawling semi-basement apartment in what was claimed to be the oldest brownstone on the upper west-side. It would be our base for around a year before we relocated here to Connecticut.

I was working on a project split between Manhattan and New Jersey, so spent most weekdays traveling out of the city – counter to the traffic flow – and getting home in the late-evening. Effectively, while Jane and Elise had the city all week long, I really had it for the weekends and, if lucky, a couple of days during the week.

Not that I was complaining; I’m the luckiest man in the world, blessed with a lucky career that allowed me to use my strengths much of the time, and that brought me across the pond to live slap, bang in the centre of the most exciting city on earth.

On the drive out to Jersey, I would listen to ‘Teach Yourself Spanish’ CDs, or formulate more ideas for my nascent novel, Family Rules

[which wouldn't see full light for a further 7 years]

while also thinking through the final stages of Karaoke Criminals, which I was still working on. Later that year, I would take the decision to publish Do Sparrows Eat Butterflies?

It was a fertile year – my stressful corporate life feeding energy into my creative pursuits, all over-amped by the ‘on-ness’ of living in Manhattan.

Of all the lucky things I experienced, when I look back on that year in NYC, I think about the books.

You see, the apartment we were in was lined with bookcases, and everyone who’d lived there had left behind books. All genres, all periods. I only wish we’d been there longer and I could have soaked up so many more stories and perspectives of the world.

One previous inhabitant had been interested in black history and literature, as a whole section of the bookcase were given over to books that I, a Brit steeped in contemporary fiction, hadn’t ever had on radar. Two books I remember particularly are:

• Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
• Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe

These beautifully crafted stories of proud people confronted by change were beautiful. And I never would have had them without the luck of being in that apartment.

Living in the apartment was like an ongoing American history lesson, taught by novels that I knew of, but had never read:

• The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
• To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee
• The Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
• On The Road – Jack Kerouac

All of these stories grounding me in the history of 20th century America. Had I been there longer, I might have chosen any other period and dived in – there was a Mario Puzo section, Mark Twain, Herman Melville. Many, many others.

Oh, and Hemingway, of course – The Old Man and the Sea is one of my Dad’s touchstones

[more from the movie than the book, I think, but I've been known to be wrong!]

so when I found the book on the shelf, it got read )

In the years since, I’ve tried to build on my luck – and the gift those previous tenants gave me – by consciously going ‘off pattern’ and buying books I normally wouldn’t read – most recently, at the suggestion of some friends, stepping into Charles Bukowski; William Burroughs a while back.

There’s no grand point or learning from this reflection, just my acknowledgement of the luck I’ve experienced and the gift that unknown people gave me without even knowing they were giving it.

Stories are precious, they transmit our collective wisdom, they are told to be told again. Please, if you’ve read a book, pass it to someone who hasn’t; or at least leave it on a shelf where someone might find it years later.

Please make someone else as lucky as I’ve had the chance to be.

A prize to the first person who can name me the three lead characters in Karaoke Criminals…

Created using wordle.net

I thought I’d provide a little update here about progress with Family Rules.

By way of background, as a way to keep me focused on the re-drafting of my latest novel, I decided to publish it online chapter by chapter. Since March, I’ve published 31 chapters and we’re well into the flow of the story – so the aim of keeping me committed to re-drafting is holding up.

It’s also really great to get good feedback on the work and have folks signing up to receive update notes.

Even despite this, I was suprised and pleased when reviewing overall stats today – I don’t usually spend much time doing this – to find that overall, there have been nearly 7,000 views of Family Rules since March. That’s a quite amazing number – way more than I thought would come my way – and I’m humbled to have that many people swing by, even if they’re just passing through.

I’m looking forward to telling the rest of the story – as with each of my books, most notably Karaoke Criminals, re-drafting has let me fall a little bit in love with the story again. I’m enjoying tightening and focusing Family Rules and making the end as good as it has the potential to be is very, very exciting.

If you read anything I post, thank you – you have my love.

Vince

Earlier this year, I started my own consulting business, working out of my home (and much of the time in cyberspace). It’s been a blast so far, though there have been inevitable adjustments – mostly to do with when Jane and the kids are around and either a) want/need my attention; or b) are adjusting to the fact I’m here and in the way!

All in all, though, I’m loving my free agent life – work that plays directly to my strengths and which doesn’t carry a political overhead/tax, writing when I feel like it about whatever, playing music at any time of the day and not just after everyone else is in bed.

I’d travelled enough in my former life to be able to hot-desk in any situation – Karaoke Criminals was mostly written in Heathrow airport, a Virgin Atlantic plane and in US hotels – and when I stepped out on my own, I fully expected to be working anywhere I felt like it. Which has mostly been the case. Until this morning.

The girls are doing summer camp about 10 miles away each morning this week and dropping them off for 9am, it doesn’t make much sense to come home just to turn around and head back over to pick them up at 11.45am. So, this morning, I packed my laptop up, planning to spend the morning in a Starbucks near to the summer camp, just working and writing before heading home.

All was going to plan, until I turned from the counter with my coffee.

Every seat/table was taken. By retirees and baby boomers, reading their daily newspapers. One table in the corner had two guys with laptops doing some work

[though, in all truth, they looked like Jehovah's Witnesses, plotting a course on Google maps]

but otherwise, this Starbucks had become the very modern equivalent of the old school pensioner’s drop-in centre.

Which is fine; they paid for Starbucks’ service and facilities just like I did.

Still, I couldn’t help feeling affronted somehow – and, like any other human being, I did a quick assessment of how many multi-person tables had only one person sitting there – maybe if I’d been more awake, and practicing some true community-spirit, I might have asked to join them – but as I needed to get some work and writing done, I didn’t. I took my coffee out and walked back to my car, inwardly grumbling all the time that my plans had been stifled by Starbucks not being available for me.

I briefly considered going to sit by the river and working, but the humidity was bad, mosquitos out in force and I wouldn’t have been able to clearly read my laptop’s screen in the daylight. So, in the end, I smiled, got in the car and headed home, letting the bad feelings trail out in the wake of my car.

Maybe this is what we’ve got to look forward to as the Baby Boomers retire and decide to use their free time – maybe everywhere will be flooded with these grey-haired folk, passing time and using up space. Part of that makes me feel like the still-living in George Romero’s ‘Dawn of The Dead’ where zombies wander around a shopping mall, not so far from their existence before they became undead. Is that destiny for those of us who are trying to build a life beyond the baby-boom masses? Or am I just over-reacting because I didn’t get what I wanted immediately when I wanted it?

I’m honest enough to say it’s more of the latter than the former.

I can be such a whiner sometimes.

Ah well, at least I got to write at home.

Peace, love, happiness and understanding,

Vince

Like anyone who writes for more than passing pleasure, I have several projects on the go at the moment. And even more that would be on the go if I could only kick myself up the rear-end and get down to it.

My main focus right now is re-drafting Family Rules ready for publication later this year – as a way of keeping myself motivated through the re-draft, I decided to post it online while I was doing so. This had been suggested to me by my brother-in-law and good friend, Mark Henning, who makes beautiful music out of Vancouver, Canada (check out Combine The Victorious and Guilty About Girls). Since the first chapter was posted in March this year, it’s had a little over 6000 visits, which is very cool and, to be honest, many more than I expected. As always with a redraft, I’m bored, but enjoying the process of tightening things up; and falling a little in love with the story all over again.

I’m partway through my first original screenplay, working title Team Building, where Office Space meets Lost with distinctly dark outcomes. The original plot-line for TB was hatched in a bar in Ann Arbor, MI with another writer, Elton Greig. It’s been gradually brewing for a number of years, however I have no idea of whether it’s on the mark or not – screenwriting as a medium isn’t natural for me – story, yes… script layout, not so much – and I recently sent the current draft to my mate, Laurence Blyth, who since we were at school together has pursued a career as film cameraman and now DP. He liked it a lot, which gave me the kick to keep going and bring it to resolution – bring on the slaughtered goat!

[that'll make sense when you see the finished movie]

Musically, version 2.0 of the Monkey68 live crew is about to play our first gig (hopefully) towards the end of the month. It’s a very relaxed set-up and we’re having fun. I’ve released a lot of tension that was locked into my playing style and am feeling the benefit. I have a number of songs in development, one in particular that is very close to being recorded – it’s about my dad (who has been very, very ill) and is pretty heartfelt. He is a strong man and has given strength to me – I love him. The song is untitled as yet, and should be done in the next couple of weeks.

Now we get to the fun bit – all the things I’m thinking about…

About a year ago, I launched We Are Story, a writing experiment – and was, for a while, pretty prolific over there. The idea of We Are Story is quite simple. Anyone can join (it’s free) and contribute to a central story, told in ‘pods’ – about 500 words. The only catch is that only 5 draft pods are in play at any one time, and any one writer can only have 3 reserved. This means that no one writer can dominate the story, and that threads can develop without being fully realized by one person. Oh, and once a writer reserves a pod, it’s only live for 5 days, then it disappears. It works much easier in practice than it does to describe it here. Now that I’m emerging from some pretty big life changes, I’ll be heading back over to We Are Story – there’s something about the David Lynch-esque story developing there that has me intrigued! If you write, and want to explore or simply practice, come on over and join me.

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, I’m going to experiment with recording some chapters of my already published novels: Do Sparrows Eat Butterflies? and Karaoke Criminals. I did a test reading yesterday of both and think it may work – though it’s a little weird speaking aloud what I’ve spoken in my head up until now. I’ve done my fair share of acting, and am always reading books to our girls, but there’s something very, very different about speaking my own words. It’ll be an interesting experiment to head down into the studio and record the chapters.

On the subject of Do Sparrows Eat Butterflies?, I’m highly likely to start working that into a screenplay before the end of the year. Jane and I were kicking around ideas and believe that it can be transported from its original British location to the North East US. So, the original’s Ramsgate becomes New London, CT and Certainty will either be out on Cape Cod or up in New Hampshire (undecided as yet). If you don’t know what Certainty is, you should buy the book!

The final major work that’s dancing around in the back of my thoughts is a business book, targeted at my former professional cohort, HR. It’ll draw together various strands of emergent neuroscience and management literature to challenge the function to rip apart all the stuff it’s introduced over the past twenty years, destroying the unwitting and counter-productive bureaucracy of the ‘modern’ organization. It’s working title is ‘Destruction HR’ and the first line will be ‘This book does not contain any best practices’ because HR is notoriously guilty of reading about ‘best practices’

[which, btw, don't exist]

and blindly adding them into their own business – HR is guilty of being a relentlessly additive function. I’ve yet to decide whether Destruction HR will be written and published under my own name or my corporate alter-ego, BadConsultant. That decision will guide both the style and format – so it’s important to get it right up front!

I guess all I can say on all of the above is stay tuned.

[I daren't say more, I have too much writing to do!]

Vince