T minus five

Went to the St Louis NaNoWriMo kick-off party on Saturday.  Hubby and I are so used to NaNo events taking place on Sunday, we woke up the next day convinced we had to go back to work, and had a second Sunday this weekend.  Photos from the party are online, and a great time was had by all.

The best part of NaNoWriMo for me is the group get-togethers.  The kick-off party, the weekly write-in, and the TGIO party at the end.  The more people at those, the more fun it is.  What makes me sad is that we have a bunch of people who have decided that they don't want to play with the rest of us.  They didn't come to the kick-off party.  They've organised separate weekly write-ins and won't come to the official ones.  And we won't see them at the TGIO party either.  They have the option to create a new NaNo region for themselves, and have refused.  So we're stuck with a splintered region, and a them-and-us set of threads on the regional forum.

We have people joining us from St Charles, Wentzville, and even Illinois, much further afield than the splinter group.  Even if it was the distance that they object to, it's only four write-ins for one month of the year.  This is supposed to be fun, not about carving out territory and creating empires.  Hubby and I will happily drive a half hour or an hour to be with the group, because a larger group is way more fun.  It bothers me that we have people that aren't acting for the good of the region as a whole, but who won't take the final step and create their own region.