Cloying

This is officially my most unfavorite word and I'm seeing it everywhere. Some people dislike the word moist. I happen to hate the word cloying. Who decided this word has to be in every new piece of fiction I read?

What I think happened is that some bright light at a NaNoWriMo group event decided everyone should use the word cloying in a sentence while working on their manuscript. If you've ever been to one of these write-ins, you'll understand what I mean. After accomplishing the task, everybody forgot to edit it out of their finished manuscripts. For some reason publishing house editors must have been reluctant to interfere with creativity and now this stupid word has been foisted on the whole world.

There has been some interest in having me as a NaNoWriMo group leader in Sackville. If I had the time, I might even consider it, however, I would never challenge my group to use that word. I'd choose something like egregious. Now that's a word I like. I can even use it in a sentence: Please stop the egregious overuse of the word cloying in descriptive writing. (Better yet, don't use it at all).