Last year in April, I took part in Script Frenzy for the first time.  Unlike NaNoWriMo, I found the whole experience easy and actually had fun doing it, while managing to not only meet, but exceed the goal for the month.  This year however, the Office of Letters and Light, has decided not to host Script Frenzy and are instead offering another session of Camp NaNoWriMo.

     Last year was also the first year that I participated in Camp NaNoWriMo.  I thought that joining a “cabin” would offer me the motivation I needed to meet my daily targets and thus, the target for the month.  If I was sharing the experience with others and saw their numbers growing, that would push me to keep up or maybe even try to do better.  Unfortunately, the experience didn’t quite pan out the way I had expected.  Maybe it was the luck (or unluck) of the draw that found me in a camp with people that seemed even less motivated than I usually am.  How I managed to write far more than any of the other “campers” and still have my worst NaNo performance in the two and a half years that I had been participating, is beyond me, but their numbers barely budged and after the first few days, no one was even talking.  I’m not typically one that looks to chat with strangers, so normally, I would welcome the silence.  In this case however, I felt like it sucked some of the motivation right out of me.

Half Empty or Half Full?
Image Courtesy of Brian Holm / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

     Given that experience, can you blame me for being hesitant about joining again this year?  Add to that, the fact that I haven’t really written or even edited anything in over a month and that I am in the midst of a huge project at work, which is sapping my energy and I can’t help but see it as a recipe for disaster.  Is it being realistic or just plain old pessimistic?  Either way, I only have about two weeks left to decide what I’m going to do.

To camp or not to camp, that is the question.