It's one week until the local kick-off party and I am partially prepared. I'll probably use tomorrow to get myself together. Today, it's feverishly working in lab.
Anyways, last year when I first became ML, I started giving out goodie bags to the people who bothered to show up at the local meetings. I had tried to coordinate with the other ML at the time about getting goodies from HQ, but well, let's just say that it didn't pan out. I'm not sure she quite understood that postage and Nanowrimo swag were not cheap on the side of the organizers (especially since all of this stuff gets mailed out all over the world)--and Chris Baty and co. always end up scrambling for donations every year. If I'm ever going to get another co-ML, he or she must at least make some sort of effort to attend the meet-ups. (And not set a bad example by blatantly breaking the rules about writing something else rather than a novel--but maybe that's just wishful thinking. I can't enforce anything.)
Let me be clear again: I can't enforce anything. If people want to write poetry and memoirs and toaster oven manuals during Nanowrimo, go right ahead. No one's going to stop you. Because you're not going to care even if I tried. But I am seriously annoyed. I'm an Old Skool Wrimo who thinks the rules are there for a reason. Look at it this way: Do you think someone who swam a running marathon should get the same award as someone who actually ran the course?
One might argue that you could never compare a physical sport with a creative endeavor. And one could also argue, because writing is creative, the rules are a hindrance. Well, if you think it's so much of a hindrance, then why are you doing Nano in the first place? I think it's a case of freeloading--that people want to feed off the energy of the event but actually not do it. Technically, this isn't hurting anyone, but it's the principle of the thing that has me shaking my head.
