On Halloween night, the clients of the day all seem to proceed as if their therapists are people to whom to "trick-or-treat", the same as if they were doing it in their home neighborhoods. Anna thus returns home from work with a bag full of candy. At midnight thirty, Yulia finished the first 20-minute sprint organized by the state's Discord server.

"Yulia! I'm home!" Anna announces her return while showing the contents of the bag of candies her clients gave her. Licorice, chocolate, lollipops and so on.

"You missed the starting time of the challenge!" Yulia hollers at her, which then makes Anna put the candy down in the kitchen and, later on, return to her room to start writing Falsebound Kingdom.

During the first 20-minute sprint, Yulia managed to write about 450 words of Alcoholic Massacre's prologue, and Anna gets ready for the next 20-minute one, opening her note files as well as the Manifest of No's. As soon as she creates the file containing Falsebound Kingdom, which is on the cloud for ease of backup.

As soon as she hits /join in the sprint channel of the Maryland state server, she sees not only Rania and Yulia do it, but also other participants from elsewhere in the state, such as Annapolis, Bethesda, Silver Spring, Federalsburg and Frederick. With over a dozen participants being up late at night, all starting to write their books, and apparently competing over how many words they manage to write over the next 20 minutes.

Because of how Anna planned the early stages of Falsebound Kingdom in the previous days, words flow very fluidly from her brain to her hands, and from there, into the computer file she is writing the book on. However, because of the nature of a writing sprint, all participants feel compelled to write whatever comes to their minds. Oh my goodness, I feel like someone at the other end of the system could beat me to the sprint! I hope I can sustain my current mental speed for the full 20 minutes! Anna thinks, while typing at speeds that feel unnaturally fast to her. And in a neat language, too, without it being too heavy on figures of speech. Unlike so many indie high school books, here it focuses on the parents, and it opens with the paperwork they fill out so they can even be hosting the Chinese kids, erm, spies in the first place. Which means the opening arc is about the parents preparing the household for hosting the exchange kids.

She gets yet another idea of what to add to the Manifest of No's, but abstain from noting it until the end of the sprint since she feels like it would detract from what the point of a sprint is to her eyes.

At the same time, Yulia feels that, with Anna present in the next room over, and sprinting, she needs to redouble her efforts during the same 20 minutes, as she feels like Anna's mental speed is going to be crucial in sprints. In turn, it makes Yulia write faster than in the first sprint of the night.

But as the clock is ticking in on the sprint, they need to check on their word counts in the dying seconds of the sprint, and they both succumb to the temptation of inflating their word counts by splitting words that can be split.

Once the end-of-sprint signal is given on Discord, both ladies check their word counts and Anna manages to write a whopping 793 words in a sprint, "winning" it. Yulia manages to write at a very high speed herself, and wrote 741 words during that span, placing second.

"How do you feel about sprint writing?" Yulia asks Anna after leaving her room.

"It's good once or twice, especially when you can't necessarily devote as much time to writing as you would like" Anna answers, while typing into the Manifest of No's, also cloud-hosted, alongside her research notes. No opening with a move into a new town, or the beginning of a school year.

After the first sprint, she also adds Rania, Samantha and Yulia to her own watchlist of writing buddies for this year's NaNo, and systematically accepts requests from other would-be writing buddies both on Discord and on NaNoWriMo's system. And, of course, preparing a cup of ground coffee, which ends up finishing the last of their ground coffee.

"Do you want a cup of coffee, Yulia?" Anna asks her roommate from the kitchen.

"No, Anna, I'm too tired to continue writing" Yulia yawns right afterward, after writing over 1200 words in the opening hour of NaNo.

Anna proceeds to prepare a café au lait so that she can keep the creative juice flowing, while Yulia is going to bed. She braces herself for a few more hours of intensive writing, albeit in complete radio silence, so that she doesn't awaken Yulia.

By 2 AM, Anna, under the effects of the coffee, decides to go ahead and put Falsebound Kingdom on Wattpad so that she can start posting on the appropriate channel of the state's Discord server to show what Maryland's other NaNo'ers write, for those who are active on indie literature platforms. So it appears that Rania posted her first chapter of her NaNo in the dead of night, so will I, Anna muses while she essentially copy-pastes the information found on the NaNo's system.

As such, it proves a rather straightforward operation, after copy-pasting the opening chapter. She then follows Rania on Wattpad, while is also followed by Rania, and she now has 3 followers on Wattpad: Rania, Samantha, Yulia.

But, well into the night, not even a strong café au lait proves enough to keep going and fatigue sets in as she keeps writing. As her mental energy is getting drained, her writing has gotten noticeably slower. Before she goes to sleep, she takes a look at the word count of what she has managed to write during the night. By 4 AM she managed to write about 3000 words and, while tired, she's elated by the progress she made, and enters that word count into NaNo's system so everyone following her on NaNo would know what progress she made that night.

Three hours later, while Yulia's footsteps aren't enough to awaken Anna, what comes next, when Yulia prepares breakfast, will.

"Anna, there's no coffee left! Can you please get coffee?" Yulia screams in her direction.

"Just grab one at the corner store. I'll go buy coffee beans later today. In the coming weeks, I'm expecting to drink more coffee than usual, and I shall buy accordingly" Anna then yawns, still not completely recovered from this tiresome night spent writing the opening 2 chapters of Falsebound Kingdom.

I feel confident in my ability to write the story up to the point where the exchange students arrive, but I don't feel like I should write in "modular" fashion, that is, writing later chapters and then fill in the gaps afterward, since I think it makes me more vulnerable to painting into corners. My characters start learning to cook Chinese meals before then, eat rice and pasta with chopsticks, Anna reflects on what she plans on writing while at the morning kick-off later today in Pikesville, which she organizes. Yet she returns to bed, since she feels like she needs more sleep, and programs the alarm clock for one hour before the morning kick-off.

So she sleeps an additional, much-needed 2 hours, and by then, while she's more rested, she's a little hungry. After she got hastily dressed and brushed her teeth, she gets to Croustille Café, where she doesn't hesitate to buy something to eat, as well as coffee, before the write-in starts. And several attendees of the daytime kick-off were already there before she arrives.

She gets a full-length baguette as well as a large cappuccino, knowing that she must make up for a loss of sleep. Which she gets in the nick of time, before she begins her presentation of the daytime kick-off.

"Hello everyone, happy November first, and happy NaNoWriMo twenty-forty. I'm Anna, I'm a first-timer, so it's a learning journey for me, for which I'm excited to be here with all of you. And we are keeping the art of novel writing alive, in a world where people often seem to prefer different forms of cultural activities. So, to kick things off, we're doing some introductions, our names, what we're working on, and what are our expectations going into the month. Please, don't hesitate to ask questions to each other if necessary; writing fifty thousand words in a month might seem daunting, but is more manageable with the right support systems in place!" Anna harangues the attendees of this write-in.

Then, she checks on Wattpad, where both Rania and Samantha posted their opening chapters while she was asleep. She skims through both, but clearly, once again, Samantha is betraying her age in her opening. And their word counts, too! Rania already hit the 1,667-word daily goal, whereas, according to NaNo, Samantha didn't reach it yet.

And yet, Anna keeps writing about the steps the host family is taking to learn about Chinese food and music until she feels like she hits a wall. In her mind, the first week of school is too early to show the Chinese spies actually know about American politics at a much higher level than is typically expected of exchange students, let alone the local kids.

Once she finishes writing the second chapter, about 75 minutes later, her word count swells to about 4,000. Oh boy: this is no good! I can't keep going like this forever, this is not a pace I can sustain! Anna muses before she starts asking the other attendees around.

"Say that exchange students wanted to start a business in the host country; how are they going to get the seed money? Because they are spies in the US, they obviously cannot ask for seed money from China" Anna asks the attendees, and then on the state Discord as well as on NaNo's forums.

"They are obviously unable to get business loans, because they constitute legally binding contracts" another attendee tells her.

"What kind of exchange student would want to start a business while on exchange?" yet another attendee asks her, believing that Anna is hosting one such student. For this reason, she feels a little uncomfortable answering.

Just because my characters have a business plan drafted by their handlers in Beijing prior to departure doesn't mean they have access to local seed funding. While starting and running their Young Republicans and Young Democrats clubs might give them access to potential customers, would they be able to attract investors on top of customers? It's kind of a chicken and egg situation... but of course! Until I can get a satisfactory answer to the seed money challenges specific to them, I can always have them suffer anxiety privately! Anna gets a flash of an idea that might yield her a few hundred words or maybe an entire chapter where they worry about how to fit their clubs into their seed funding, and how fast they need to do so. And maybe have one of the club members introduce the spies to extemp, too!

And, while writing out the scenes where the would-be entrepreneurs would show their anxiety among the host family, she stops writing and then starts researching on her own, about the challenges faced by all young entrepreneurs regardless of their residency status. Without waiting for the answers from the state Discord or from the NaNo boards.

By the end of the stated finish time of the write-in, she keeps tabs on these two resources, while also trying to come up with reactions and scenes where they are begging for funding, be it on social media or whatever opportunities running their clubs would afford them. Hopefully getting the coffee beans for the two of us would help me clear up my mind, she thinks while finishing the baguette and coffee cup she ordered almost 3 hours before.

However, Anna, feeling the time crunch to return home and then to work in time, hurries and just goes to the nearest grocery she can find on her way back home, buying coffee beans and the largest bag of fair-trade coffee she can find. And, because, by then, Halloween-themed candy is on clearance, she doesn't hesitate to buy as many of these as the store will allow. Not the healthiest diet in the world, but she is reminded of the cold, hard truth when buying fresh fruits and vegetables: local fruits and vegetables seem to be favored by that store's customers to the extent these same products are actually grown in Maryland. Or in neighboring regions, such as Northern Virginia, and southern Pennsylvania: obviously, the closer, the better for these customers.

My characters' potential customers, especially those who lean Republican, would want to buy from locally sourced suppliers, depending on how narrow the scope is. When it comes to "buy local", however, there are several levels of what it means, and I should do well to remember that when I get to the scenes where my characters start looking for customers at party functions. However, it still doesn't answer my questions of how they're going to get the seed money! Anna's anxiety over her writing project follows her to the self-service checkout.

And yet, this manifestation of "buy local" makes her want to add yet more items to this Manifest of No's that has come to dominate her entire writing process, even on day 1: no using a work as an Author Tract (she feels the danger is very real in her case) and no straw-manning. Which she does once the payment is processed, but she struggles to contain her emotions regarding writing on mobile. The redhead might be fine doing it but only for short periods at a time, such as for texting. However, she feels like something is off when trying to work on Falsebound Kingdom on mobile, and the exchange kids tell the host family their code names they will need to adhere to. Cuh-laire for the Democratic-leaning female spy, Massiekur for the Republican-leaning male spy.

I hate writing on mobile! Anna struggles to resist the temptation to shout, before returning home with the groceries in tow. I can't see much of anything with the small screen size.

Once she returns home, she checks on the state's Discord server as well as the NaNo boards to see which of these answers, if any, would be satisfactory to her as she tries to fit Cuh-laire and Massiekur's quest for seed funding into something else entirely, as the two appear to be struggling to get seed funding even though they both join FBLA (Future Business Leaders of America; suggested by someone on the NaNo boards) on top of their respective partisan clubs. Just knowing where the solution comes from doesn't mean much without the solution and how to implement it. Also, I must consider making FBLA a lower-priority club later on, since I know where this is going: these spies will have a lot on their plates, Anna sighs before she checks on Wattpad's notifications.

"Yay! My first comments!" an ecstatic Anna shouts when no one is around, and grabbing her dinner.

These comments are mostly focused on how accurately Falsebound Kingdom appears to capture how adults in host families live through the process of hosting exchange students, even empty nesters. She proceeds to update word counts on NaNo once again, and, on Discord, is greeted by a question from Samantha. Her client wants to write about a "romance on a deadline" but can't seem to think of a deadline that appears believable. But she doesn't fret about Sam's absence of word count at this point of the day, since Sam just returned home herself from a day at school.

Yet Anna doesn't hesitate to ask her client a question in a DM about that concept of romance on a deadline, hoping that it will help Sam jumpstart what conflict the story might have. "What do you mean by romance on a deadline? Do you mean that someone must romance someone else by a certain date, or someone going into a relationship, knowing they will part ways on a specific day?"

I have way more experience dealing with the latter than with the former, because I have some clients who express remorse and other negative feelings because they feel their world crashing around them, especially in love, and it came up often in my clients last April, Anna reflects upon the kind of conflict she would expect to see if Sam wants to deal in a certain type of romance on a deadline. And it will affect how Sam will handle it.

Sam's answer comes very rapidly. "Someone going into a relationship, knowing it won't last"

"There's a lot I could have to say on the topic, but I don't have time for this now" Anna replies back to the 9-year-old writing buddy before going to work.

For the day, she always seems to keep in the back of their mind the questions she feel are of interest on the state's NaNo Discord server (without divulging the identity of the clients from whom that information comes, and people on the server usually aren't interested in the sources of information)

Later in the day, after seeing clients who use drugs to self-medicate, or who otherwise can't cope with the performance pressures placed on them by their families and their academic environment, Anna doesn't feel any closer to getting any answers to her lingering questions about seed funding in entrepreneurship because none of the clients of the day had issues related to entrepreneurship. By the time the dinner break rolls around, however...

"Finally, my client has released her opening!" Anna thinks out loud when she goes to eat, and she checks on the progress of her writing buddies.

"I hope your client has a better story than the narratives pushed by both sides during this campaign, and last week's debate was a total gong show that reminds me of 2020" Garuda makes his wish when Anna opens Sam's opening chapter on the Wattpad mobile app.

So Sam's book is a sequel of the last one? I can't blame Sam for only implying that her main character isn't academically negligent; she doesn't know the material yet, and it would be ill-advised for her to write about actual coursework. But better studying-induced fatigue than nothing, Anna's thoughts surface while skimming the opening.

"Now, it seems like this electoral campaign has become stale, and it will be all over next week" Anna sighs, while Falsebound Kingdom is still heavy on her mind.

And her writing buddies' progress is obvious by the 8:30 PM mark: Rania somehow managed to write even more at this point than Anna did at night and during the morning, Sam wrote 1714 words, and Yulia, somewhere in the 2900-3000 range.

People tend to write more in the early days of any given NaNo, while later on, they crash and burn. A few who feel like the 50,000-word goal is realistic but is still somewhat missing the mark will feel in a rush to finish and write more in the last days, Yulia thinks, looking at her watchlist on NaNo, while she somehow thinks of her main character as using alcohol magic like one would ECM (electronic counter-measures) in aerial warfare. Yet, for some reason, Sam has completely bypassed me, even though I am supposed to be her mentor for NaNo!

Yulia then proceeds to post her opening chapter on Wattpad, and finishes the day with an additional 1500 words.