Is NaNoWriMo Dead?

It’s that time of year, when many of us are getting ready to spend the month of November writing our 50,000 words in the National Novel Writing Month annual event. Started in 1999, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is a nonprofit organization that encourages writers to give such a monumental feat a try. I’ve personally participated 8 times, and each of those times represents a month filled with long nights and hard work, editing, some stress, but ultimately a huge sense of accomplishment.

But there have been problems. Problems I was unaware of, but they have been big enough to throw doubt on the whole idea of participating in events sponsored by the organization.

The problems began to come to light in 2022. It turns out that the public forums on the organizations website were often home to inappropriate behavior. This is an obvious issue that any public forum might encounter. NaNoWriMo took quick action, making their forums read-only while they investigated. Fair enough; at least they were trying to address the problem. Nonprofits often lack robust resources, so it isn’t surprising that moderation wasn’t as strong as it should have been. Eventually though, the forums were removed from the site, leading to further criticism as the organization had deleted years of community rather than addressing the core problem. This whole scandal did lead to shake ups in the community and a strengthening of standards, which ultimately is good. The forums still need to return as they are a key part of the event for many users, but there were positive steps taken.

That was just the appetizer for NaNoWriMo’s possible demise.

As with most things, it was the sponsor that lead to the problems. Early in 2024, NaNoWriMo appointed a new director. It seems that since then, almost exclusively questionable decisions have been made. It all started with the posting on their site titled “What is NaNoWriMo’s position on Artificial Intelligence (AI)?” In this post, they stated that the organization “does not explicitly support any specific approach to writing, nor does it explicitly condemn any approach, including the use of AI.” That would have been enough to say. Many users, myself included, felt like the endorsement of AI writing was both against the spirit of the challenge, and a change urged by one of the corporate sponsors of the site, ProWritingAid. Their business model depends on people buying into AI at the expense of doing the work for themselves, so it would make sense that they would want to steer a writing community to use their for-profit product. And if the people running NaNoWriMo had any sense of responsibility to its own community, it would abandon a problematic sponsor or make a statement clarifying that their positions are not aligned purely for financial incentives. But instead, they continued with this:

“We also want to be clear in our belief that the categorical condemnation of Artificial Intelligence has classist and ableist undertones, and that questions around the use of AI tie to questions around privilege,” the post continues. It then outlines how it feels AI condemnation is classist, ableist, and poses general access issues.

“Not all brains have [sic] same abilities and not all writers function at the same level of education or proficiency in the language in which they are writing,” the organizers write in the “Ableism” section. “Some brains and ability levels require outside help or accommodations to achieve certain goals.”

Instead of an unpopular opinion, they had created a controversy. Suddenly, to question AI was to be classist and ableist. It’s a profoundly troubling statement, and many have correctly pointed out that this framing of AI is itself classist and ableist. It strongly implies that certain people cannot write without the assistance of AI. That goes beyond those who need specific tools to help their ideas get to a screen or paper. This is stating that someone might need to have things written for them, and they should be seen as a protected class that still has the same abilities as writers who have never used AI, including those from all socioeconomic backgrounds and with all sorts of abilities. Stephen Hawking comes immediately to mind. He didn’t need AI to generate his ideas, but he did use tools to help them translate for the rest of us to read. There is a difference.

This statement received immediate backlash. Several other sponsors left, staff members resigned, and it was widely covered in YouTube videos and blogs. Many saw this as the end of NaNoWriMo. They did attempt to clean up the language, but they did not walk back their position. (https://nanowrimo.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/29933455931412-What-is-NaNoWriMo-s-position-on-Artificial-Intelligence-AI?ref=404media.co)

I think the future is unclear for NaNoWriMo, and that is unfortunate. What was once a chance to prove oneself as a writer has been tainted by corporate greed and chasing after the new shiny tech-bro thing. For an organization that is about encouraging writing to have turned into a pro-AI shill is sad to see. I can only hope that the director is ousted soon and someone new can right the ship. If not, I don’t think it has much of a chance. Anyone worth listening to has turned on them, and it is very difficult to regain trust. But we’ll see.

Should you use NaNoWriMo in 2024? Maybe. I think it remains to be seen whether they get the participation they’ve seen in previous years. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a big decline, but I also won’t be shocked if there’s not much change at all. The news about these issues weren’t mainstream and the organization has now buried their problematic statements sufficiently. They did not delete them, but they are now relatively difficult to find. Everyone has to decide for themselves if this is all an issue.

As for me, I won’t be participating in the event this year. But that doesn’t mean I can’t write a novel. The rules of NaNoWriMo are simple. Write 50,000 words in 30 days. I don’t need an organization to do that. I love earning badges and having a community, but it’s been a lonely place without the forums anyway. It’s starting to feel like a corporate shell of something that was once great.

Alternatives to NaNoWriMo:

Plotterati: This is a promising new writing site. The creators’ vision is pretty big, but I think they can make it happen. It’s got some issues at the moment. They may not have prepared sufficiently for the traffic the site is getting. It all seems a little shaky. But I’ve looked around their site and I’m interested. Check them out at plotterati.org.

myWriteClub: Less event focused, this is a fun site that lets you set your own goals and share them. It’s very simple and to the point, and I like that about it. They are currently running a beta, so it’s worth trying out to see what they have planned for the full launch. Check it out at mywriteclub.com.

novlr: Forums, tracking, resources. With their free plan you get everything you’ll miss from NaNoWriMo, but if you want even more features you can subscribe for things like Author Websites and custom domain. The downside is that they are also partnered with ProWritingAid, but they don’t seem to have made that fact a guiding principle. They are worth a look at novlr.org.

The Order of the Written Word: If you want the November writing challenge, this might be the site for you. They seem to primarily exist as a Discord group. Several of their sponsors are former sponsors of NaNoWriMo, and none appear to be AI companies. Go to stygiansociety.com for more info.

NovProg: This tool tracks your progress on a novel you are writing. It’s a simple desktop app that lets you set your goals and then you can use it to track your writing. If the graphs help, check it out at gottcode.org/novprog/.

Videos about the controversy: