Although she doesn't stay up at night as late as the previous one, Anna awakens at 7 AM, much less tired than on the first day. Around the breakfast table, she has some questions for Yulia that she didn't have I mind until the euphoria of the first day of NaNo wore off.

"I wonder what drove you to write, Yulia..." Anna asks her roommate.

"My job as a civil servant for the FAA is a little unsatisfying, but I need some experience before I can get to what I really want out of the civil service. In the meantime, I take to writing to get what my job couldn't provide"

"I believe it's some agency over what you're doing that you really want. It's not uncommon for people who feel powerless over some aspect of their lives to take to creative endeavors to fill that hole in their lives"

"Bingo, Anna. Thank you for the coffee, by the way"

Anna then prepares her cup of coffee as she prepares for another day of writing at home. She begins her day of writing by checking on the state Discord server for possible answers to her questions about seed money and teenage entrepreneurship. All that she seemed to get from both NaNo boards and the state's NaNo Discord server was linked about what they shouldn't do in her mind. Crowdfunding should be avoided, especially since the sale of PR and advertising using deepfakes is not a B2C service, the lack of originality can hurt them when entering entrepreneurial contests whose prize is seed money, the host family would probably be wary enough of entanglements not to invest... she's caught in a dilemma of what her characters should be talking about at the FBLA session and how they are going around getting the seed money.

But none of these is going to be written just yet, since the current chapter she's writing is about life in the partisan clubs, and how the Young Democrats club seem to be much more popular among the student body than the Young Republicans. And not just because the student body seems to lean more Democrat than Republican. "Cuh-laire" (Claire), however, had about 15 students join the club, as opposed to a grand total of 2 members for the Young GOP.

And also about how the other Young Republican introduces "Massiekur" (Massey) to extemp, about what really matters when practicing for it. For which she skims resources such as the Extemper's Bible, about what beginners in extemp should do.

And, of course, both partisan clubs are made aware of upcoming events in what is known as the "invisible primary", that is, the period where candidates show interest in running for office before the primaries begin. Both intend to take advantage of the invisible primary to get to the potential customers, but in the middle of a daytime writing sprint, Anna takes a good look at what is, in effect, a fourth chapter. I can't keep adding new stuff to it forever just to pad a word count! It will become too slow, and it will affect my motivation to finish writing it! However, I can always imply that Cuh-laire got implants back in China, and based on the MSS believing the American public preferred buxom women irrespective of race.

But then she responds to Samantha's morning query that was sent just before Sam got on the bus to school. About the "good boy" who's the protagonist of Sam's NaNo project, Expiry Date, and what to avoid. "Given the academic imperfections you gave your MC, I'd say don't make him apply to Ivies or equivalent"

As soon as Anna finishes writing her chapter 4, which is promptly posted to Wattpad, she finally reads Rania's NaNo blurb and story for this year, Gruesome IRGC, on the platform. Which is a hybrid of a horror story and a war story, in that it takes place during the Iran-Iraq war and the villain is Iranian, with its victims being Iraqi, but doesn't actually happen anywhere near the frontlines. About the daily life of Iraqis during the Iran-Iraq war, Anna is essentially clueless, except for what happens to the people who survive what Rania plans to have her characters endure. She knew it mostly for Iraqi war crimes, the War of the Cities and how religious tensions in Khuzestan were part of what sparked it. "If you have anything to ask me, I believe I could be of help only as it relates to PTSD and its treatment" Anna tells Rania on a Discord DM.

I hate reading or watching horror because it reminds me of what I hate most about my job. Say what you will about high school fiction, and it reminds me of my own job, too, but I guess, for some reason, I can relate to it more than I could a horror novel. Which probably means that Falsebound Kingdom will be much more light-hearted than Alcoholic Massacre or Expiry Date. Let alone Gruesome IRGC.

What little inspiration she has left leads her to write about, after a FBLA meeting where the spies learn about the early stages in a startup's lifecycle, the host family providing the would-be entrepreneurs with transportation to the nearest fundraising events for the local "invisible primaries". They went there hoping that local business owners could support a local startup, and support, say, a specific Congressional candidate. Once there, the spies ask not so much the candidates themselves, but other attendees for their needs in PR and advertising. And pitching their would-be startup as a local option, once they are assured of what buy local means to them in this context.

By 1 PM, she watches her word count, and, while she may be happy about that aspect of progression, she still feels that something is off and the rest of that plot depends on there even being a business to operate. For now, the characters might find themselves with a book of customers, but she draws a blank when she remains confused about the seed money.

------------------

Later that day, when a client lands himself in her office because of unethical behavior from their previous therapist, the client makes the following confession:

"My parents made me shop around for therapists who would give me some diagnosis so that I qualify for extended testing time, so I asked them to change therapists afterward" the client confides in her.

"OK, but how does this search for a therapist affect you personally?" Anna asks the client.

Anna then reviews the file from that client and, while there were signs of psychological issues, none of these pointed towards the kinds of issues that would warrant extended time. No ADHD, no learning disabilities or visual impairments. It appeared to be more centered on performance anxiety.

"I felt obligated to perform on tests not only by my parents, but my parents believed that I needed every edge I could get, short of hacking"

As the session goes on, it becomes clear to Anna that the client feels used, manipulated by their parents even, but that client is otherwise a rather typical client that comes to her office. Except that most of her clients came from the southwestern suburbs of Baltimore, or the northeastern suburbs of DC; this one instead lives in the north-western suburbs of DC. More or less the same level of affluence.

But, as the client runs down their feelings and stressors, the client then mentions something that sparks her interest:

"In everything I do, I never feel like it's enough. It took me forever to get the seed money!" the client laments, while crying.

"Did it take forever to get advance customers as well?"

Maybe... maybe that client could indirectly help me and it's only now that I realize it! Anna has a series of questions in her mind for the client: what the client's business is selling, what's the client's business model, whether it's common for the industry to ask for deposits prior to getting the business done...

"Please forgive my lack of familiarity with the early life cycle of a business, but you said you were obligated to block off a certain amount of business for an investor that promised repeat business and it forced you to do so at discounted prices. Is it a normal practice?"

"I feel more stressed out and I feel like I need to make enough profits from my other customers to buy that customer's stake out; no other entrepreneurs at Whitman had to resort to that sort of thing"

That's a double-edged sword: I now know how to resolve my characters' seed money problem, but at the same time... Whitman. I glossed over that part on the initial review, but that client triggered some past memories I have of that place, Anna now has a better idea of where to go from there. Yet that memory of the Venomous Agendas' game against Whitman during her first HSNCT participation slows her down. Up to this point, everything I knew about this place was about how this place was a humanities and social studies magnet school, and they played quiz bowl.

"Please make an inventory of what you can delegate about your business, and to whom. Maybe delegating tasks could help; you have a lot on your plate" Anna suggest them.

"My own entrepreneur classmates all seem capable of juggling all these things, and the same goes for my classmates in my other activities. Delegating tasks makes me feel like a failure!" the client starts crying, while trying to figure out what can be delegated and to whom.

"If all else fails, you can always try Upwork" the parent of the client tells them.

"It might not be of comfort to you, but you're not alone to feel like they need to hide their suffering in public. I have clients like you every day who feel like they need to accomplish more than their neighbors to please their parents, or to maintain social status at school. I have one question: how fast did your business grow?" Anna believes that part of their feelings of despair comes from the growing pains of the business.

"You don't sound like a therapist anymore! You sound like a banker!" the client's parent exclaims.

"It might sound cliche, but as your business grows, you will no longer be able to do as much as you would personally like"

My hometown's idea of an overachiever is someone who excels in one or maybe two areas. In a sense, I was lucky compared to my clients. While we were expected to focus on whichever varsity we pick, because we were allowed only 2, there was no real pressure on us to perform. And there was no rank. My clients? Some of these are unhappy at school because they take courses they don't like, either for the easy A or for the extra weight, pay for outside help at any sign of struggle, or tack on activities just because they look good for college applications, Anna, triggered by this client, gets a mental side-by-side comparison of her own past when she was her clients' ages, and the clients' harsh realities. At the same time, that client took their time to look up the evolution of their business' key performance indicators.

"The main problem is my business isn't scalable. Even if I could delegate all non-core tasks to others I could trust, I wouldn't be able to generate much more revenue" the client ruminates about the delegation bit.

"In that case, you must be cautious about what work you choose to take on. It might be painful to tell someone no, but better tell someone no and have a manageable schedule than say yes to too many customers and crack"

As she saw in far too many clients, she could tell that the efforts they make to keep up appearances and please their loved ones are taking their emotional toll on them.

------------------

That night, upon returning home, she brews a bowl of coffee so that she gets ready to use this newfound inspiration to go forward with the story. Even if it ends up being an all-nighter, with all the sprints that it implies.

But before she starts sprinting, she takes the time to thank all the contributors to her questions on both the NaNo boards and the Maryland NaNo Discord server.

"Time to write a ninja attack!" Yulia shouts while she prepares to listen to Japanese music.

"Did you run out of ideas?" Anna asks her roommate before the sprint begins.

"No; I can seamlessly fit one in the plot. The enemy tries to take out the airpower by killing the pilots, er, wizards in their sleep. But then my main character can't kill the ninjas without exposing herself to potentially lethal alcohol doses, so yelling Ninjas? What's going on here? will spur the others at camp into action"

"I really hope alcohol isn't the only type of magic with liabilities"

"Totally not. However, I don't show the liabilities until they become relevant to the plot. Like the blood content going up the more Janick, my protag, uses alcohol magic"

"The sprint begins in three, two, one..." Anna warns her roommate.

This late into the night, Rania also enters the sprint and, surprisingly, Samantha. Sam couldn't make it on the first two nights, presumably because of some curfew at her home, but seeing Sam here makes me happy. For as long as Sam can keep up, anyhow, Anna thinks while the list of sprint entrants is compiled by the server and the 15-minute sprint starts.

And then the creative juices flow, with roughly the same number of participants in this online sprint as on the opening night. The result of this sprint is that Anna made it so that "Massiekur" had much more success in getting not only pre-orders than "Cuh-laire" had, but also seed money along with these. He also managed to secure some business not only from one of the GOP frontrunners for the House race, but from several candidates for state legislature primaries, too. And especially those who wanted to present the GOP as inclusive. With "Massiekur" being, somehow, invited to be the youth member on the campaign board of a state senatorial candidate.

Not that "Cuh-laire" returned home empty-handed, but with the seed money secured, the pair could buy an ERP, as well as deepfake manufacturing software, and they could register their business, with the pair agreeing to have "Cuh-laire" spend more time on deepfake manufacturing than "Massiekur", Anna thinks about what comes next, and, because the Democrats still have more popularity among the youth, there were far more young people willing to volunteer on the campaign trail for both stages of the Democratic primaries, visible and invisible, than for Republicans.

Fifteen minutes later, Anna finishes the sprint on top, with a whopping 640 words, and Rania in the middle of the pack with 358 words, but still ahead of Sam and Yulia, who both barely broke the 300-word mark. After the sprint ends, Rania starts commenting on Falsebound Kingdom in DM: "I liked Falsebound Kingdom: are you sure you're new to novel writing?"

"Yes, I'm new to novel writing" Anna answers Rania in the same DM.

"My main problem is that you seem to give too much detail, as if people knew nothing about the early stages of electoral campaigning. Also, you seem to want to flesh out too many characters"

Anna then gasps, surprised of being accused of wanting to flesh too many characters out. "Better spread my characterization budget too thin than to give it all to one character"

Anna then puts two more items in the Manifest of No's, based on Rania's comments: No hoarding characterization as well as No hoarding plot space. That is, before she starts commenting on Gruesome IRGC. "I had the same feeling reading Gruesome IRGC, but with the Iran-Iraq War"

"You probably know more than most people around here about it"

Damn it! Not that VAs quiz bowl game against Whitman again! Anna has a flashback of that specific tossup about the Iran-Iraq war at the HSNCT. And the protagonists of Gruesome IRGC are Sunni, while its antagonist is Shia. Religion is a major theme of Gruesome IRGC. She looks at her total word count, 7390, and she's well ahead of schedule... for now.

Yet Sam isn't participating in the next sprint, since her parents are scolding her about staying that late writing.

"Sam, go to bed!" Dutton, Sam's father scolds her. "It's well past midnight!"

"I just want to finish writing this chapter, dad! Please?" Sam pleads with her fdad.

"No, Sam, not now! You will finish this after breakfast!" Samantha's father then proceeds to save the file containing Sam's book and, later on, shut down the computer.

Daddy doesn't understand that inspiration doesn't come whenever you want, and you must grab it when you can, Sam keeps to herself while she goes to bed because of her father's actions.