2 Time Capsule: Herstory

Title:  Herstory - Man's Plight for Equality
Date:  undetermined (technically still unfinished)
Setting:  Original idea sparked junior year of college, mainly written during second post-college job
Form:  Novel (maybe more of a novella at the moment)

For this one you have to follow the link....click on Herstory - Man's Plight for Equality; it will lead to the prologue and first two chapters of the book.  (Note--this is an old version of the story, slight changes have been made since.)  Of course, I wouldn't blame you if you were too lazy to read all of that especially without at least a little bit of a blurb....below is what I initially envisioned the book flap to read.

In 1890, the American Woman’s Suffrage Association and the National Woman’s Suffrage Association joined forces. In the midst of this union, a group of extremists under the leadership of a young ambitious woman formed a radical group called the WŌMen Society. In the hopes of achieving their goal, the WŌMen Society departed for a new world under the guise of equality.

Almost a century later, Charles Amarett finds himself plagued by dreams, which transform his normal happy domestic life into a crusade for equality. With the support of his wife and children, Charles unites the men of his society in a plight to balance the scales through the obtainment of man’s right to vote. In an attempt to guide and inspire a nation of men and understand the force behind his dreams, Charles discovers there is more to his dreams than he could have ever imagined.

Notes:  I decided to go a different way with this time capsule post.  No poetry today.

When I was in college, one of the general ed requirements was to take a woman's studies course.  It was during this class that the idea first popped into my head.  I actually posed the idea to one of my roommates, but she thought me crazy.  Sometime between then and when I really picked up the idea and ran with it, I had written a short (not even a page) intro.  When I did return to it, I'd like to say that was probably in 2001 (a good four years later), those words expanded into what is know recognizably the prologue.

This here was my first (longer than a dozen pages) story.  I have always been more partial to poetry.  Truth is I really don't have the patience to write much longer items than that.  Case in point the story With Just a Touch that I started on this blog and have yet to finish even with the end close at hand.  Even if we look at how long it took me to finally complete the insane ten act ballad, my motivation for writing anything of length is quite obvious.  I argue with myself that I managed to trick myself into writing it.  Since each chapter starts off with a dream, I was able to wrap myself around these short little stories that could be written in any order I like.  Even when I finally filled in the meat of the story between the dream sequences, I went out of order.  Anything to keep myself from realizing the amount of time and effort I was putting into one entity.

Herstory is not my only novel-ish length write.  I did manage to trick myself into writing another.  Unfortunately for the other three already started potential writes, I have yet to undermined my lack of motivation to expand them beyond the initial pages and outlines I've created.  Technically even this story here, while complete, is not quite finished.  I think part of the reason for that may be because it is my first; it holds a special place in my heart and for that reason just doesn't feel quite right (or done).  I think I'm just not quite ready to let it go.

Artifact I:  Original write (in green) of the blurb intended for the book jacket.