In which I go through many of the stages of grief over Script Frenzy

The Script Frenzy logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By now most of you will have heard the news but for those that haven’t: Script Frenzy has been cancelled. I promised you back in this post that we’d discuss this more and I haven’t yet because, frankly, the whole thing leaves a terrible taste in my mouth. I still love The Office of Letter and Light and I’ll continue to support them monetarily and as a volunteer with NaNoWriMo, none of that has changed. But I am unhappy with how this all went down. (The staff at The Office of Letters and Light knows how I feel about this because we’ve talked about it already so I’m not dropping any bombs here, don’t worry.) The following is just my personal opinion and doesn’t reflect on anyone or thing else.

Script Frenzy was never as big as NaNoWriMo but it was also relatively new. I think, with time, it would have grown especially since it was a bit easier than NaNo was and movies/video games/TV have more mass appeal than books these days. I love The Office of Letters and Light but I think one of the biggest problems was that Script Frenzy was never run correctly. That’s not necessarily anyone’s fault, after all, most of the staff aren’t script writers, but they tried to shove a script writing event into the same template as their novel writing event and it didn’t quite work. That coupled with the fact that they kept changing the date and goal made it difficult to get people involved and us MLs were only just starting to get a foothold these last couple of years when April and 100 pages became the solid date and goal.

Anyway, I am confident that they would have figured it out… were figuring it out for that matter… but then they pulled the plug before we got there. They were low on funding which is a legitimate and fair reason to cut the event… except, my shoulder devil is quick to point out, they might have had enough money to run it if they hadn’t just launched a new event, Camp NaNoWriMo. Which brings me to my two biggest problems with how they decided to end Script Frenzy:

• They cut it without warning and didn’t give anyone a chance to save it. MLs were literally notified hours before everyone else. I understand if they didn’t want the public to know how much financial trouble they were in but why didn’t they give us MLs a heads up ahead of time so that we could try to raise the funds in our area? For that matter, why didn’t they do a Kickstarter or similar to try to save the event? I’ve spoken to many people who would have been happy to have kicked in cash to save the event if they’d been given the chance or even known it was in trouble. (I think this was a case of Boy Who Cried Wolf. Because all of their fundraising emails have the exact same tone, if they were trying to convey an extra urgency for Screnzy funds, it didn’t come across at all.)  I think that’s what bothered me the most about this, that they just killed the event without giving us members the chance to save it. By the time we knew the event was in trouble, it had already been cancelled. It just made me feel like they wanted to get rid of it.
• But what just added salt to the wound, to me, was the fact that they had to cancel Script Frenzy for low funds right after they had just spent a ton of money on launching Camp NaNoWriMo. Because the Camp NaNoWriMo of 2011 (which was the only one we’d seen at the point when they cancelled Screnzy) was half-baked at best and I failed to see why they needed to spend all that money on a whole new site when the camp feature could have just been an add-on to the existing NaNoWriMo site, especially since there was really nothing to the 2011 Camp. It seemed like such a colossal waste of money and resources. It really felt like they ditched the older event for the new shiny thing since it’s easier to start new than fix something (this is such a writing metaphor). Now, to their credit, they’ve improved Camp NaNoWriMo tremendously for 2013 but one of the biggest improvements this year is that you can choose to make Camp NaNoWriMo into Script Frenzy and write a script. That coupled with the fact that they gave Camp NaNoWriMo Script Frenzy’s old digs… April… really makes it seem like they killed the old event to launch the new. (OLL’s take on this when we spoke about it is that the Camp money was always ear marked for Camp so it wasn’t taken away from anything.)

On a selfish level, I was also hurt. I have donated MANY hours to this event between serving as ML to two areas for three years and promoting it online with articles, blog posts, etc. I had already done work on the 2013 Script Frenzy when I was notified it wouldn’t be happening. To have all that work you put in amount to nothing because the event is gone now just plain old sucks. Especially because they didn’t give us a chance to save it. Let’s just say I didn’t exactly feel like all the hard work I put in for them was valued.

Not to mention that I had a personal attachment to Script Frenzy. I loved that scrappy little event, I loved getting people excited about trying something new with their writing and I loved getting a couple of extra scripts written a year for my own purposes. Even if I hadn’t been an ML, I would still be mourning the event as a participant because it was just starting to gain momentum.

Anyway, that’s the gist of how I felt last June when I got word that they were cancelling the event. As harsh as you may think I’m being above, I’ve cooled off dramatically. (In June I was PISSED.) How do I feel about it now?

I feel weird. Because… they are still basically having Script Frenzy but just making it an option in Camp NaNoWriMo. Basically all they did was get rid of the MLs and the name. Their stance is that adding scripts to Camp is a way to increase participation in Camp but that just makes my head hurt because if they needed the Screnzy members to puff up the numbers for Camp, why was Camp the one they kept when Screnzy is the one they cut? Did they just want to rebrand Screnzy into something more closely related to their most popular event (which would have been fair since many people didn’t realize they were related)? If so then why not just tell us they were renaming it and folding it into Camp rather than telling us they were cancelling it? Did they cancel it and then realize that was foolish and move add it to Camp or was that their plan all along? I think I’m more confused now than I was last year when they first announced it.

But, in the end, it’s irreverent. While I wish they would have given the event over to the members if they no longer wished to run it, it’s ultimately theirs to do with as they wish. I am glad they are keeping part of the event alive through Camp NaNoWriMo even if I really don’t follow their logic.

And, on a personal level, it’s just as well anyway. Since Camp NaNoWriMo doesn’t have MLs, I have this April off from OLL duties which will be a big help since I’m having enough trouble working with a newborn without adding additional responsibilities. But I do wish this whole thing had been handled differently.

Anyway, I promised my Screnzy and NaNoWriMo areas that I’d give my honest opinion on how this went down and there it is. This will be my last time being negative about it and you can expect a Ra-Ra post about doing Script Frenzy as part of Camp soon.

In the meantime, now that you’ve had time to think about it, how do you feel about there being no more Script Frenzy?