Preface
Is it possible to reverse the three appointments to the Supreme Court that happened while Donald Trump was President and likewise for the many other appointments to the judiciary that were made? That question drives the story in Adventures Of The Minute Women. The team led by Caroline Mackay, the protagonist, makes the case that Trump and his Republican enablers in the Senate committed criminal acts. And it was these judicial appointments that created the bond to cement this criminal conspiracy. The Minute Women make this case, not in a court of law, because there is no such court that could try the group of Republican Senators as a whole, but rather in the court of public opinion. These arguments are made in the first half of the book. In this sense, the reader of the story is a juror, who can decide whether the arguments that Caroline and her colleagues put forward hold water.
The story may also prompt the reader to ask some related questions. Is it really necessary to have an organization outside of government (The Minute Women) to make this case? And even if that’s right, is this the best way to make the case or might something else be argued that would be more effective? And then there is that even if a very strong case is made, that is not the same as removal of these judges. How does one go from one to the other? The second half of the book offers up an implementation plan and is meant to encourage the reader to think these questions through.
There is another idea implicit in the story that bears mentioning. Readers can parallel process and consider the story and the related issues, while staying abreast of the news, where all things Trump seem to crowd out consideration of other issues. Given that, it is a mistake to wait for Trump to be brought to justice and for his fanatical far-right fringe to calm down before taking up the question of collateral damage created during the Trump Presidency. Waiting will lock in these undesirable outcomes. If they are to be reversed, they must be addressed head on asap.
One final point that the story makes which is worth mentioning here regards the need for an overwhelming majority of the general public to buy into the arguments that The Minute Women put forward, in order for those arguments to effect change in the desired way. As our politics has become more and more partisan, the thought of building such an overwhelming majority seems to be daunting. A part of the storyline is that the messaging be direct to the public rather than mediated by the big news organizations, which put their own spin on things. Another part of the storyline is to make the messaging easily understandable to allow the reader to draw his or her own conclusions. Ultimately it will be the readers retelling the message to their friends, which will get it to spread broadly. Can such retelling preserve the ideas in the original message? In the story it can because all have access to the original message online.
* * * * *
Tracing the origins for this story, I first mentioned The Minute Women in a blog post entitled Simon Says - Malaise, which argued that our national politics is making me and many of the people I know very angry and possibly quite depressed as well. The issue in that post was whether to avoid our national politics entirely or to actively engage in the virtual civil war we seem to be in now. I didn’t see a way to decide between these two alternatives, which explains the malaise. The Minute Women as a concept came up as a way to connote active engagement and make it a war of ideas.
I wrote a subsequent post that explored the avoidance path more fully called Going Off Your Rocker As A Rational Choice with the idea that to avoid thinking about something you must be completely engaged in something else and then, how might that be achieved? In this sense, Adventures Of The Minute Women is an exploration of the actively engaged path.
The reader might very well wonder: why not do such an exploration in essay form rather than write a novelette? I have two different reasons for writing this as fiction. The first regards the likelihood of pulling off the ideas in the story. If from the outset it seems too unlikely that this can work, then why even try it? To get out of this bind, the story contains a cheat to enable things to work - once some of the ideas Caroline and her colleagues advance have been put into a brief video, the video goes viral. It takes a while to get to this point in the story. Before that, those who work for The Minute Women are true believers in the cause. I think the story becomes more fun to read this way. An essay or a set of essays simply couldn’t convey this sense of anticipation and excitement.
I’ve actually tried this approach in writing a novel to convey some of my ideas about higher education more than twenty years ago. It was called The Rise of JCU. I had little difficulty in constructing a plot to my satisfaction. But after writing about half the book I stopped. I needed to develop the characters more and I found I didn’t have the right skills for doing that.
More recently, I’ve dabbled with writing short stories on a variety of different topics, which gets to the second reason for writing fiction. It’s very much in the spirit of developing a new hobby in retirement. My wife has chosen gardening for her hobby. Some friends opt for photography. Writing fiction could be such a hobby for me.
Yet a similar issue emerged with the short stories that I experienced in trying to write a novel. In each of these stories there was one character who was meant to be me. Some common advice you hear offered to the fledgling fiction writer is to write about what you know. I dutifully followed that advice. But it turned out that the other characters in the story had the same voice, even if they superficially were different from me. A friend who is a writing instructor and who read one of my short stories suggested - why don’t you write narrative non-fiction instead?
Aware of the issue, in Adventures Of The Minute Women there is no character remotely like me. The characters may all have my voice to some extent, but I’m not there for comparison. This may not be an ideal solution, but I hope it does mitigate the problem some.
I’ve also tried in the past to write a nonfiction book. It was about what we college instructors should be teaching our students. It was called Guessing Games and promoted the idea that we should cultivate their intuition. Each chapter was a stand alone essay on a particular sub-theme. While it started out well, I found that after a while the writing felt like I was lecturing the reader. Many people don’t like to be on the receiving end of a lecture. Since I was not okay with having a minuscule audience, this writing project stopped making sense to me, so I left it unfinished.
But I’m also aware from my blogging and commenting on various listservs when I was still working full time that I was perceived as thoughtful, if prolix, in my writing, sometimes providing insight to the reader. While full lectures may evoke a yawn and soon have the reader doing other things, a paragraph or so of lecture that illuminates something important, then interspersed within a larger story line, may capture the attention of the reader.
In this case, I think everyone has some interest in our national politics. They very well may be numbed by it. Yet they might appreciate a look at our recent history that connects the dots in a way that is new for them. It is my hope that I can deliver on that with this novelette.
The story may also prompt the reader to ask some related questions. Is it really necessary to have an organization outside of government (The Minute Women) to make this case? And even if that’s right, is this the best way to make the case or might something else be argued that would be more effective? And then there is that even if a very strong case is made, that is not the same as removal of these judges. How does one go from one to the other? The second half of the book offers up an implementation plan and is meant to encourage the reader to think these questions through.
There is another idea implicit in the story that bears mentioning. Readers can parallel process and consider the story and the related issues, while staying abreast of the news, where all things Trump seem to crowd out consideration of other issues. Given that, it is a mistake to wait for Trump to be brought to justice and for his fanatical far-right fringe to calm down before taking up the question of collateral damage created during the Trump Presidency. Waiting will lock in these undesirable outcomes. If they are to be reversed, they must be addressed head on asap.
One final point that the story makes which is worth mentioning here regards the need for an overwhelming majority of the general public to buy into the arguments that The Minute Women put forward, in order for those arguments to effect change in the desired way. As our politics has become more and more partisan, the thought of building such an overwhelming majority seems to be daunting. A part of the storyline is that the messaging be direct to the public rather than mediated by the big news organizations, which put their own spin on things. Another part of the storyline is to make the messaging easily understandable to allow the reader to draw his or her own conclusions. Ultimately it will be the readers retelling the message to their friends, which will get it to spread broadly. Can such retelling preserve the ideas in the original message? In the story it can because all have access to the original message online.
* * * * *
Tracing the origins for this story, I first mentioned The Minute Women in a blog post entitled Simon Says - Malaise, which argued that our national politics is making me and many of the people I know very angry and possibly quite depressed as well. The issue in that post was whether to avoid our national politics entirely or to actively engage in the virtual civil war we seem to be in now. I didn’t see a way to decide between these two alternatives, which explains the malaise. The Minute Women as a concept came up as a way to connote active engagement and make it a war of ideas.
I wrote a subsequent post that explored the avoidance path more fully called Going Off Your Rocker As A Rational Choice with the idea that to avoid thinking about something you must be completely engaged in something else and then, how might that be achieved? In this sense, Adventures Of The Minute Women is an exploration of the actively engaged path.
The reader might very well wonder: why not do such an exploration in essay form rather than write a novelette? I have two different reasons for writing this as fiction. The first regards the likelihood of pulling off the ideas in the story. If from the outset it seems too unlikely that this can work, then why even try it? To get out of this bind, the story contains a cheat to enable things to work - once some of the ideas Caroline and her colleagues advance have been put into a brief video, the video goes viral. It takes a while to get to this point in the story. Before that, those who work for The Minute Women are true believers in the cause. I think the story becomes more fun to read this way. An essay or a set of essays simply couldn’t convey this sense of anticipation and excitement.
I’ve actually tried this approach in writing a novel to convey some of my ideas about higher education more than twenty years ago. It was called The Rise of JCU. I had little difficulty in constructing a plot to my satisfaction. But after writing about half the book I stopped. I needed to develop the characters more and I found I didn’t have the right skills for doing that.
More recently, I’ve dabbled with writing short stories on a variety of different topics, which gets to the second reason for writing fiction. It’s very much in the spirit of developing a new hobby in retirement. My wife has chosen gardening for her hobby. Some friends opt for photography. Writing fiction could be such a hobby for me.
Yet a similar issue emerged with the short stories that I experienced in trying to write a novel. In each of these stories there was one character who was meant to be me. Some common advice you hear offered to the fledgling fiction writer is to write about what you know. I dutifully followed that advice. But it turned out that the other characters in the story had the same voice, even if they superficially were different from me. A friend who is a writing instructor and who read one of my short stories suggested - why don’t you write narrative non-fiction instead?
Aware of the issue, in Adventures Of The Minute Women there is no character remotely like me. The characters may all have my voice to some extent, but I’m not there for comparison. This may not be an ideal solution, but I hope it does mitigate the problem some.
I’ve also tried in the past to write a nonfiction book. It was about what we college instructors should be teaching our students. It was called Guessing Games and promoted the idea that we should cultivate their intuition. Each chapter was a stand alone essay on a particular sub-theme. While it started out well, I found that after a while the writing felt like I was lecturing the reader. Many people don’t like to be on the receiving end of a lecture. Since I was not okay with having a minuscule audience, this writing project stopped making sense to me, so I left it unfinished.
But I’m also aware from my blogging and commenting on various listservs when I was still working full time that I was perceived as thoughtful, if prolix, in my writing, sometimes providing insight to the reader. While full lectures may evoke a yawn and soon have the reader doing other things, a paragraph or so of lecture that illuminates something important, then interspersed within a larger story line, may capture the attention of the reader.
In this case, I think everyone has some interest in our national politics. They very well may be numbed by it. Yet they might appreciate a look at our recent history that connects the dots in a way that is new for them. It is my hope that I can deliver on that with this novelette.
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