Nanowrimo

No, that is not the result of a seizure or the dog walking across my keyboard. Nanowrimo is the acronym for National Novel Writing Month (which I will now refer to as Nano for brevity's sake). Nano is apparently a BIG DEAL in amateur writing circles, and since I am trying to join those ranks I figure I'll play along. The basic premise is for the month of November, you write a 50,000 word novel. It isn't supposed to be good, or even coherent, as long as it reaches the minimum word limit. The point is to get you used to producing large quantities of work at a fast pace. I am in desperate need of practice with that skill so I am going to do it. I already know how terrible the writing will have to be for me to write 50,000 words in a month, so I am not going to write a story that I actually care about. I want this to be something that I am interested in enough to write about, but not serious enough about that I will want to write it well enough for publication. I just read a great book called Divergent that was a YA dystopia. I loved it, and now I have dystopias on the brain. I think I will start outlining and plotting now, so that when November 1st comes around I'm not stuck staring at my keyboard blankly.

Premise: In the distant future, science has all but eradicated disease and injuries are healed almost instantly by nanobots (LOVE nanobots!). When people started living long lives and eating/drinking/drugging as much as they want because of the "no-consequences" due to medicine thing, the population rose too quickly for the food supply to keep up. America shut its borders and the government took drastic measures to bring things under control. Secret death squads eliminated the elderly and scientist worked around the clock to fix the food shortage crisis with bio engineered foods and fabricated nutrient pills. When people found out about the death squads there were riots. The government had to take even more drastic action and interrupted all interstate commerce/communication. Now, each state is responsible for its own food production. Only the wealthy and powerful have access to the miracle medicines, so population and life expectancy aren't a problem anymore. The focus on food production means there is actually a surplus, but the people are led to believe famine is a problem in all the states except their own. There is no communication between states and the federal government controls any and all supply trade. Fences surround the borders of the states and are guarded as much by superstition and fear of what is on the other side as they are by guards. The federal government deliberately spreads lies to each state about the world outside the fences in order to keep the people inside. This has been going on long enough that the people within each state do not know another way of life. They are wary of the "others" that live in the other states. The northeast is one big state, Texas and California got broken into two states each, and the Dakotas become one (random, but details matter!). This story will take place primarily in the state formerly known as Arkansas (because it requires the least agricultural research on my part). When the fed isolated the states from each other, they gave them all designations based on what they produced the most of at the time. Florida became Citrus, Kansas became Corn, and so forth. Arkansas became Rice, so the people living there call themselves Ricers. Ricers are lucky because the climate and terrain is ideal for all kinds of crops and farming. The main diet of the Ricers is obviously rice, but also corn, soy, and tomato based. There is plenty of fishing and game hunting (deer, bass, trout, duck, turkey, and chicken)as well as cattle and pigs. Mushrooms and nuts are other staples, and the rest of the food supply comes from what people grow in their gardens. Other than grapes and apples, fruit is rare. Oranges and lemons from Citrus are highly sought after items. Bananas are non-existent outside of the bio labs in the capitol, which of course are only for the rich and powerful. Life revolves around farming, gardening, and tending the animals. The capitol is the only place where life is not totally rural and borderline feudal. In the capitol, there is an upper class that do not grow their own food. They have normal jobs that contribute to the comfort of the government officials, such as hairdressers, chefs, artists, and clothing makers. The people in the capitol can get almost anything grown in other states. There is a small internal police force in each state, but the federal government recruits its own police force that is responsible for border control and keeping the "peace" in the states. They use intimidation and fear to control the populace. The main character will be a teenage girl, probably 16, who is a farm worker in Rice. All kids attend school until they are 16 where they learn basic skills in math and reading as well as any skills they will need to be good farmers. At 16, they take a test that determines where they will be assigned to work (kind of an aptitude test that points to manual labor, or animal husbandry, or crop rotation, or whatever). There will be a few questions on the test that the fed throws in to find potential recruits for the federal police force. The MC will be sarcastic and jaded, so she will mark her test randomly and end up being recruited by the fed (even though she is not a conformist with bullying tendencies like they desire) to her surprise. As much as she has learned to fear the fed police growing up, she will see it as a change from the monotony of farm life and join the force. After training, which she excells at, she will be assigned to an interstate transport squad. Basically, she will be a trucker transporting goods from one state to another (actually a very important job becuase of the value of the goods...think of it like an armored car gaurd). All her life, the MC will have listened to how terrible the other states are, and how lucky she should feel to be a Ricer where food is plentyful. Traveling to all the other states with her transport squad, the MC will come to realize that she has been lied to. The other states are in exactly the same state as hers (a wealthy capitol supported by the farm labor of the populace). Food is no longer scarce and population is stable. She will realize that the fed has made it so the majority of the population labors and lives poorly to support the capitols that contain the priveleged few. The fed police are mostly kids who grew up farming and eating the same foods their whole lives, so when they suddenly find themselves in a position of power, and with all the exotic foods at their disposal, they don't question things. The MC will be the only one to question the fed, and knowing she is alone in her dissent, she will use her police training and farm skills to infiltrate the federal government and broadcast a message to all the states at once that reveals the lies the government has been telling. She will be captured right after the broadcast and thrown in fed prison. She will be stuck there a long time wondering if her message was recieved, and if it made a difference. The story will end with her crush (there's always gotta be a love interest!) from the police force opening her cell and sneaking her out to join him in the resistence that has sprung up since her broadcast. So, she didn't cause a total governmental overthrow, but she planted a seed and started the wheels of change. The end. (until the sequal...)

Crap. Now I really want to write this.