Saying Goodbye to NaNoWriMo

15 years ago, I didn’t consider myself a writer. That all changed after I heard about National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). This annual challenge to write 50,000 words of a first draft of a novel in the 30 days of November showed me that the impossible was indeed within my capabilities. Fast forward to today and I’ve now published 11 books, written 9 more on top of that, won multiple writing awards, and built an amazing group of fellow writers I consider my friends. I’ve introduced others to the NaNoWriMo concept, and they also found that they are writers as well.

I still have a huge backlog of ideas I plan to write for many years to come. Unfortunately, after this year, I will no longer be doing so using any of the NaNoWriMo events. It is sad the organization has crumbled to this point, but it was probably only a matter of time before something would take it down. As a Municipal Liaison (ML) for the organization, I served the cause of inspiring the people in my local community to write the novel that’s been stuck in their head. After 10 years, I cannot say that NaNoWriMo aligns with my beliefs anymore. My story is a little long, but it’s worth the read below.

Nothing lasts, and that sucks.

To understand my decision, we need to go back to the beginning. The original NaNoWriMo website was useful to track my progress toward that year’s goal, but it was also a fun forum to connect with local writers and others who shared this passion from across the globe. I spent a lot of time on the Regional Forums, which not only had collective statistics for the Region but also contained multiple threads where writers would talk about their amazing ideas, writers’ blocks, and other random things they wanted to share. People could become “writing buddies” and we’d see each other’s progress toward that lofty 50,000-word goal.

Of course, with a website that hadn’t changed for over a decade came technical limitations as the annual event grew in popularity. Each year, there would be a clean wipe of the forums, with only a few useful threads saved that continued conversations between years. About five years ago, NaNoWriMo headquarters (HQ) upgraded the website to be more in line with the modern internet. And while there isn’t as much activity in the off-season, having an annual event meant they needed to transition the entire website in less than a year. An enormous undertaking which didn’t go smoothly at all. Now the main website where you tracked your goals and kept track of your buddies’ progress had been separated from the forums where conversations happened. Aside from the many bugs that came from the transition, core functions weren’t nearly as easy to use as before. Being able to see the progress of my friends was an almost labrynthine affair, and the regional chatbox meant to bridge the gap between the Regional Forums and the main site was an unmoderated nightmare. Many people left after that transition, since using the website was more frustrating than fun.

If only the forums had died there…

I’m stubborn, and I stuck it out, attempting to teach others how to work their way through the new website. There wasn’t nearly as much activity in the Regional Forums because it was basically a separate website that people needed to go to for those kinds of conversations—which was a dying corner of the fast-paced internet. Then COVID hit. HQ suspended all in-person events for 2020. This was ultimately the right decision, since it was better to play it safe when it came to a global pandemic. Unfortunately, the new website still had a lot of issues that made it ill suited for the transition to an all-virtual event. As every region migrated to platforms better suited for entirely online interactions (like Discord), the main site became less and less relevant. However, that didn’t mean people stopped using it.

This leads us to the big reveal in 2023. Turns out, there was a lot of bad stuff going on in other parts of the forums. I rarely ventured out of the Regional spaces, but there were large groups of people who enjoyed the wider sections of the forums as (what they thought was) a safe space to be themselves. Many of these individuals were minors, and if you want to learn all the seedy details, there are plenty of places online to get the full scoop on what happened. Needless to say, the forums all got shut down, they banned anyone younger than 18 from the site, and HQ swore to make things right by finally vetting the hundreds of volunteers that made NaNoWriMo work on the regional level (i.e., the MLs). After all, who knew if there were other predators out there that they just gave access to impressionable teenagers?

Willing to make amends.

All of this drama was happening right as NaNoWriMo 2023 was taking place. There were a lot of solutions brought forward by HQ that did not sit well with many of the MLs. As an ML myself, I figured most of these new procedures and guidelines weren’t enforceable and I’d just continue to run the event at the local level the way I always had. I was willing to give HQ another chance, since I saw they were at least trying to fix things (albeit with the grace of a blind roller skater in a marble factory). Hopefully, I could see them through this and help them rebuild into what I considered the organization always should be: a widespread network of local writing communities committed to starting authors on a journey to finish a novel.

Of course, at my local level, things were changing with the library that we usually used for these in-person meetings. What used to be an easy couple of e-mails coordinating with the events planner became a much more tedious ritual of reserving rooms only a few months out from the actual event. There was talk of cutting funding completely to this library, which was partly why it was now much harder to get things scheduled with them. And yet, this wasn’t the biggest problem with this year’s NaNoWriMo.

Despite saying that I would return as an ML for 2024, HQ must have lost my response because they asked for my confirmation again in May. I still said yes, and then never heard from them again. When I reached out in mid-September, it took weeks for them to give me a boilerplate answer that just linked to helpdesk articles that explained why everything was taking so long. This was also on top of new bugs on the website that made my event submissions not come through correctly—an issue that would not have been a problem if I had ML powers on the site and could approve my own events. Instead, they merely encouraged random people to submit events with little to no vetting or local understanding of the venues. This was what got them in trouble in the first place.

Digging the hole deeper.

None of this was surprising, of course, because through the few bits of information that were shared, it became obvious that the entire HQ staff had either quit or been fired. With no MLs reinstated, no theme announced (along with all the accoutrements like stickers, posters, and T-shirts), and the forums still on lockdown, I wondered why NaNoWriMo HQ didn’t just throw up their hands and dissolve the organization entirely. Instead, they doubled down by making a statement about writers using AI. And they were for it.

This was my final straw—and yes, I realize I should have drawn the line at grooming minors online. Current AI used for writing (more accurately referred to as Large Language Models, or LLMs) needs a lot of data to work, and it’s abundantly clear right now that the training data for these LLMs aren’t ethically sourced. This is more obvious with the image-generating AI tools, where artists are finding their stolen work used to train the AI data sets. Creatives from all different mediums have been speaking out against the use of AI, as it devalues the creative process. And, you know, wholesale theft of intellectual property is not something that should be easily forgiven.

Even if there are some useful AI tools for other parts of the writing process (like editing/proofreading), NaNoWriMo said it was OK to use generative AI to steal create stories. They claimed that it leveled the playing field for those with disabilities, which felt like a dig at those who had been overcoming their limitations for years and still achieving the 50,000-word goal. Ultimately, I could not stay with an organization that did not value the creative process, that instead encouraged taking shortcuts to win their arbitrary challenge. I’m still a man of my word, so I’ll run this year’s event (such as it is), but this will be my final year as ML or participant.

I’ll still miss it.

Most of the discourse I’ve seen in the fallout of this collapse has centered on the NaNoWriMo challenge itself. There’s no patent on the concept of writing 50,000 words in a month (November or otherwise). Tons of people “do NaNoWriMo” having never realized it was also an organization with international reach and a website that allows you to track your goals and connect with other writers. Sure, people can track their progress with other tools (I’ve been using an Excel spreadsheet for years, after all). However, NaNoWriMo’s name recognition for 25 years is partly why there hasn’t been a clear competitor to the event. Experienced writers don’t need it, but it’s always been about getting new writers to chase that illusive goal of writing their first novel.

The thing that I think most people miss with the concept of NaNoWriMo is the community aspect. Coming together with other writers to engage with this solitary activity in a way that invites competition and motivation between peers is one reason I kept coming back to NaNoWriMo and encouraging others to join as well. This isn’t only an online thing either, as participating with local writers in person has been one of my favorite socializing events of the year. These are my people, and I will miss them. I continue to connect with local authors through conventions and groups like the Colorado Authors League, but I love the energy of seeing new writers finding their groove and finally getting the novel they’ve had in their head for years onto the page.

This year, I’ll likely break through 950,000 total words for the 15 years of NaNoWriMo I’ve done. It’s disappointing that I won’t get to 1 million words officially using the event, but I’ll still continue to write. I have my systems in place now, and I know I’ll continue to write for many years. If anything, now I’ll have the freedom to do more conventions in November since I won’t have to be tied down to running the event for my region (or even writing in November at all). Hopefully, I can continue to keep some friendships I developed through NaNoWriMo over the years.

I won’t deny that NaNoWriMo helped me to get where I am today as a writer. My past experience is still valid despite the recent scandals. I participated in this challenge for over a quarter of my life, so it’s hard to let go. Hopefully, I can find something to replace the community I lost, but I’m also fine with using the extra space in my life to try new things and make new friends that way.