Confessions of a Future Politician: Epilogue
If you have come to this Medium webpage, I thank you for your patience and trust for letting me take you through this story. This epilogue will just provide the history to this novel, which includes the reason for its tragic end.
November 2018 was a pivotal month in the history of Tiered Democratic Governance. A year previously I had rewritten the TDG book, enhanced the website, and put together an ebook. My inspiration was the ascendency of Donald J Trump to the 45th president of the United States. “Surely,” I thought, “the world would be ready for my new ideas on democracy.”
After a year of Google and Facebook Ads and many hours on political forums, there was no interest. I thought it was time to put this project back on the shelf, for the fourth time in 21 years.
But a commentator from a G+ political forum, Richard Gillespie, suggested that I write a novel about the TDG. With an easier-to-read novel, I would be teaching about the TDG in a different way. But I had not written fiction before, and I had no desire to write fiction. It seemed like a strange idea at the time.
But after a few months, a setting, characters, and a plot came to me. And I thought, “I can write this story.” In May 2019, I started hammering words together. The first draft of “Diary of a Future Politician” almost wrote itself. It was a very mystical experience, with the story’s output being limited by the speed of my keyboarding.
After the first draft was done, I found a fiction writing coach, Mark Hunter, to teach me a few things about better fiction writing. Between him and my long-time editor, Cherie Tyers, we got this story ready in about six drafts.
About the third draft, two new stories were coming to me. These stories were building on the setting, characters, and plot from Diary. These two stories became “Confessions of a Future Politician” and “Circles of a Future Politician.” And did they ever consume me! I could not stop thinking about them.
But I knew I had to get the first book done first. Trying to revise a current work was very difficult when future work is crowding my mind. It was a strange situation.
When the two new stories were bouncing between my ears and I was trying to suppress them, a voice said to me: “Dave, you have to kill Thelma off in a dramatic way. Then Confessions will lead into Circles.” The tragic ending you just finished reading was set in stone months before I put the first sentence of Confessions into my computer.
Diary was finished in April 2020. Then I started writing Confessions, I again experienced the mystical phenomenon of a story almost writing itself. And this time, I needed fewer drafts to get this novel to my satisfaction. But most of this story was developed during my revision of Diary.
The next novel, “Circles of a Future Politician” was written concurrently with “Confessions.” It was a great sense of relief to get the first draft of Circles into my computer. The two stories were now somewhere other than between my ears. Circle builds on the setting, characters, and plot of Diary and Confessions. Circles should be ready by December 2021.
And here is another mystical dimension to Confession and Circles. The setting, characters, and plot in Diary was developed without knowing two other books were going to be written. It was so amazing that I really didn’t need or want to adjust anything in Diary to bring the three stories together.
In my TDG book, I outline four stages of TDG development. Diary represents the first stage. Confessions and Circles represent the second stage. I have a fourth book percolating — and it will represent the third stage. Thankfully, this fourth book is not as consuming as the second and third book.
I’m not going to claim that Confessions is going to win any great literary awards. I recognize my limitations as a fiction writer.
But my writing is good enough to tell an important story. Confessions is a story of average people building a new kind of democracy. A wiser democracy. A kinder democracy. No other writer in the world is telling this kind of story.
The purpose of Diary, Confessions, and Circles is to show future TDG builders how to build that democracy. I hope readers can see themselves in Thelma’s and other characters’ positions. Just ordinary people just attending a few meetings a month.
This early TDG really is not that hard to build. It requires a time commitment of about 10 hours a month. It requires deliberate learning a few new “democratic” tools. And it requires associating with people outside one’s normal social circles. But if these outsiders have bought into the TDG principles, they will be great people to work with. The early TDG should be a lot of fun — and filled with a life purpose.
I have been on Medium for almost two years, trying to promote the TDG. Tangible results have not been forthcoming.
And it is time to put my spare time and energy to a new life project. I am building a simulation to teach people about the challenge of managing a pandemic. With this simulation, players will better understand the roles played by epidemiologists and politicians in these difficult times. I have lots of testing to ensure the mathematical model is working property. Look for “Dave Volek’s Pandemic Simulator” in September 2021.
In other words, I am putting the TDG back on the shelf. The fifth time in 24 years.
Parts of my TDG book are posted on Medium, along with quite a few TDG related articles. My first two novels are also posted on Medium. Even though I won’t be on Medium much anymore, these “articles” just might find their way onto the right person’s Medium feed or a random search engine call. This right person just might be inspired to move the TDG forward.
Remember you have just read a book about how to build a new democracy. You are one of the first people in the world to read anything like this! Maybe — just maybe — you have just been given a great responsibility to really change the world.
For just a few hours a month!
Dave Volek
February 2021
