Cliche Manifest

Chapter 9: Unrestricted Word Warfare

"It's over, Rania. I no longer want you to mentor me for NaNo" Anna announces to Rania in a Discord DM.

"Why?" a puzzled Rania asks her.

"You told me not to get bogged down in details, you told me not to flesh out too many characters, and you even told me I was juggling too many themes and subplots at once!"

"No writer, no story is for everyone"

"I get that no writer, no story is for everyone. However, I feel like you've been unduly critical to me without telling me how to budget characterization, nor which themes or subplots I ought to cut, and how! It's not constructive to me. But I will still read Gruesome IRGC"

No story is for everyone. Hopefully Douglas or Vanessa will prove more constructive to me than Rania has been. Or Yulia even. Rania might tell you something nice, but goes back to being negative a few moments later! However, what I really want out of Gruesome IRGC is about life of civilians in warzones, and to a lesser extent, the Iran-Iraq War. Yet she grudgingly acknowledged that characterization is my strongest area, much like plotting is Rania's, Anna thinks, while struggling to finish writing this extemp scene, during the second phase of the round. Then this chapter will end. But of course! Sprint writing feels, to me, like the writing equivalent of extemp! I've been so focused on the sprint itself that I glossed over how it would feel to prepare for one!

But traditional sprinting isn't the end of the story. Yulia declares a different kind of word war, of which traditional sprinting is a subtype: write 3% of your word count. All participants in it must declare their current word counts. While I am still well ahead of schedule, since I already wrote 30,419 words, with these lingering headaches, writing another 900-something words is going to take me all day! Anna starts feeling dread about the word war declaration. Especially given the entrants: Douglas, Vanessa, and, of course, Sam and Yulia. She knew Douglas had an advantage because of the "formulaicity" of writing mysteries, but Sam receives a last-minute comment from Anna on Wattpad before the sprint starts: "Your characters' game of thrones focuses on the reach schools; you should add a new round of hostilities based on what their matches and safeties are, and have your protagonist take the ACT"

Then she realizes the choice "Massiekur" made to support a certain candidate for the state senate made other, more moderate Republican candidates all over the state want to order deepfakes from him. Especially as it relates to youth and minorities issues. Which makes more radical candidates want to allege foreign interference. To the point of overshadowing other issues, such as sustainable development, education or justice.

The way this is headed, campaigning appears to threaten the spies' academic success, and the host family must juggle that, too. They do study, but they aren't study machines, unlike other Young Republicans or Democrats, Anna thinks, while she is reminded of what is considered liberal or conservative in state politics varies wildly from a state to another. Such as what would be considered conservative in Maryland or Virginia would be liberal in the Deep South.

Yet, despite the headaches she feels, she feels like she can and should do it, and drinks the rest of the coffee bowl moments before the so-called word war starts. And the list of entrants says that Rania is somehow involved. However, Rania has an advantage in that she has ~100 fewer words to write than Anna.

Anything to get my goal of 1700 words per day done faster... Forget about Rania, forget about Gruesome IRGC, just focus on my own story, she ruminates while she only has about 200 words to go to reach it.

Driven by the remnants of the coffee bowl, she writes at a much faster pace than she initially believed, about as fast as she did on day 1 of NaNo. Don't worry about spelling or grammar, I will have the rest of the day to edit it, she braces her mind for the impact of potentially poor writing.