RIP NaNoWriMo

Two months after announcing that NaNoWriMo would be shutting down due to funding issues, the site is down.  If you hadn’t yet saved your participation data, it appears that window is closed… assuming the site doesn’t resurrect itself, but that seems unlikely given the announcement at the end of March.

I don’t know exactly when the site went down, but it’s been sometime since last week, as I believe the last time I checked it was almost exactly a week ago.

I wrote last year about word count trackers to use as alternatives for NaNoWriMo.  I tried all of them during November, and settled on TrackBear as a clear favorite.  One of the advantages had been the ability to download your writing stats from the NaNoWriMo site, but of course that’s no longer a consideration.  Even so, I highly recommend TrackBear.  The only thing I think it’s missing is a progress widget.

NaNoWriMo may be officially gone, but the spirit of the challenge will persevere.  There are many of us who plan to maintain the local communities and even pursue the original challenge of writing a 50,000-word novel in November (or, really, any month — some communities are changing it to a month that makes more sense for them).

The Denver region intends to keep the original spirit of NaNoWriMo alive for our local participants.  We had already established a year-round write-in and, once the scandal broke last year, we started taking our region in a more independent, unaffiliated direction.  It turns out it’s a good thing we already started that process, as we’re fully on our own now!  We’ll see in the coming months what, exactly, the future of the Denver NaNoWriMo region will look like.

The End of NaNoWriMo

I know I already posted earlier today, but this is important.

Today emails went out to the NaNoWriMo community: The organization is shutting down due to lack of funding.  I will repost the full email below, omitting the embedded video since I don't want to give her any more views.

The email and the video lean into the idea that NaNoWriMo failed to come back from its crises the last couple years because the community sabotaged Kilby.  I argue otherwise.

Starting in early 2024, she emailed all of the Municipal Liaisons (volunteer regional coordinators, basically in-person event organizers and local points-of-contact for the organization) informing us of massive changes to the volunteer ML program.  We would have to go through extensive identification and background checks, and sign an oppressive contract that had clearly NOT been written by a lawyer.  After much debate, she put us on the back burner, and told us she would be in touch soon with more details.  (Spoiler alert: We never heard back.)

This is important because when NaNoWriMo functioned the way it should, the MLs actually drove both local participation and donations.  We encouraged writers, kept participants engaged, and promoted Double Up Donation Weekend and similar events.  So cutting us loose meant cutting loose organized local participation and a ton of donations.

Next, she made a statement about AI that many writers, especially those with disabilities and in lower socioeconomic classes, found offensive.  The entire community was up in arms, published authors bailed from the advisory board, and many longtime participants swore off NaNoWriMo, many even deleting their accounts entirely.

If you're keeping track, this means that by the end of summer, she'd not only cut loose all the volunteers who did much of the legwork to get donations, but also ostracized the community at large that provided the donations.

As November approached, we former MLs noticed a complete lack of communication from NaNoWriMo.  All of the usual prep emails, designed to drive anticipation and get people to commit to doing the challenge, were missing.  It also became obvious that there was little or no staff at HQ.  Whether that was from people leaving when management changed, or new management forcing people to leave, we don't know, but the end result was that HQ didn't have enough staff to do all the things that usually resulted in a flow of donations.

In other words, staff ran the fundraisers.  No staff, no fundraisers.

And without the staff, the big donation weekend that typically pulled in a huge amount of fundraising — the donation event that we MLs had all promoted at our events and in our emails in previous years — was never even scheduled.

Toward the end of the month, Kilby seemed to suddenly realize the organization wasn't getting funding, and several panic-button funding emails went out, but it was too little, too late.  By that late in the month, many writers have lost momentum and dropped out — especially without local events and MLs helping them to stay focused and keep going.

And then early this year, the news broke that NaNoWriMo had actually failed to renew their registration to accept charitable contributions.  As a result, they were listed as delinquent by the state of California and technically couldn't accept donations.

When you eliminate the volunteers and staff that get the donations, drive away the community that provides the donations, fail to solicit the donations, and don't even maintain your ability to legally accept the donations... uh, yeah, what did she think was going to happen to the organization's funding?!

So take Kilby's video blaming the community for killing NaNoWriMo with a grain of salt.  I think that's indicative more of Kilby's know-it-all attitude and her refusal to acknowledge her mistakes, both of which were frequently on display in our (MLs') dealings with her.

With all that in mind, feel free to read the original email, below.  If I can get a transcript of the video, I'll publish that too, as I don't want to give her video — which was posted to her personal account — millions of views and enable her to use that to monetize her YouTube channel over the dead carcass of the organization she destroyed.

To Our NaNoWriMo Community: 

We come to you today with sad news. After six years of struggling to sustain itself financially, NaNoWriMo (the nonprofit) will begin the process of shutting down. 

Explaining how we got here is both simple and complex. The funding woes that have threatened so many nonprofits in recent years are an unextraordinary trend. Many beloved organizations announced their closure last year. Many more are fighting for their lives.  Media coverage of financial crisis within the sector—especially among arts nonprofits—has been widespread.

Yet, there are ways in which NaNoWriMo is extraordinary—and reasons why we had hoped we could buck that trend. The sheer size of our community, its global reach and its longevity, held at impressive levels, even during a tumultuous year. There is no shortage of writers who want to participate in NaNoWriMo. Yet, building a community and being able to sustain it are two different matters. 2024 was a revelatory year.

In order to fully understand how we reached this decision, and why we view it as the only alternative, we encourage you to watch this video about the State of NaNoWriMo. The video also contains some important acknowledgments and information about the logistics of our next steps. Most importantly, the video shares real data and information that the organization has not discussed previously. The plot is thicker than you might think. 

We recognize that the closure of NaNoWriMo represents a huge loss to the writing community, and that grief over this outcome will be exacerbated by the challenges of the past sixteen months. This is not the ending that anybody wanted or planned. And—believe us—if we could hit the delete button and rewrite this last chapter, we would. But we do have hope for the epilogue. 

What’s next for NaNoWriMo, the indebted nonprofit, is much different from what's next for actual Wrimos. We hold no belief that people will stop writing 50,000 words in November (and April, and July) or stop seeking support for the journey they’re on. Many alternatives to NaNoWriMo popped up this year, and people did find each other. In so many ways, it’s easier than it was when NaNoWriMo began in 1999 to find your writing tribe online. 

Our greatest hope at this moment is that you do two things: support arts nonprofits you love (they really, truly need you) and keep writing words. Your stories matter. 

Thank you for all you have done for the organization, and especially for each other, over all these years.

Sincerely,

The NaNoWriMo Team

 A Few Additional Notes

• We anticipate that some people might want to log on and capture information that is meaningful to them, like their lifetime word count or stats from previous seasons or challenges. We also anticipate that some folks on the Young Writers Program website may not have backed up work that they wrote directly into our system, and may wish to do so at this time. If there is something you feel you need to retrieve, you are welcome to try. However, our site tends to crash a lot when overrun with too much traffic (chronic technology underinvestment is mentioned in the video). We apologize for any inconvenience if the site gets crashy.
• If you are a recurring donor, thank you for your ongoing support of the organization (truly). We have cancelled all recurring donations on our end in order to ensure that you will not be charged as we transition into our next phase. 
• If you want anything from the NaNoWriMo store, please don't delay. We will shut that down soon as well. 
• Finally, we have observed that, at times of change, many members of our community are in want of spaces to process these new developments, and that, historically, we have hosted many all-community online spaces. Unfortunately, we have very limited resources to reply individually to comments or to moderate our social spaces at this time. We will do our best but make no guarantees. 

How to Prep for NaNoWriMo (or Writing in November)

NaNoWriMo may start in November, but for those of us who organize for our regions, the work starts way ahead of November 1st.  There is lots of organizing to do, sometimes as far back as September to get our venues and events lined up.

Even though we're not officially Municipal Liaisons this year, my (unofficial) co-MLs and I are still organizing as usual, so we've been busy setting everything up.  In some ways maybe we're even busier this year than normal, as we've been trying to figure out how to address NaNoWriMo's AI stance, distance ourselves from HQ, and find NaNoWriMo alternatives for our region.

But even if you're not a local organizer, October can be a good chance to prep for writing in November.  Not everyone is a plotter, of course, but plotting and worldbuilding aren't the only things you can do to get ready.  Here are a few things I find helpful to do before November starts.

• Clean your home.  Seriously!  You likely won't have time in November with all the extra writing and events.  Doing a good deep clean now will make you feel less guilty in November.  Unless you get writer's block, of course.  Then you might be motivated to clean.
• Plan ahead.  If you're planning to go to a lot of write-ins and events, start getting those up on your calendar.  Active regions should be posting their events in the next few days or week.  And if you don't see any you'd like to attend, create your own!  You can submit your own events on the NaNoWriMo site so that others know when and where you'll be writing.
• Carve out time to write.  Even if you don't go to the events, take a good look at your schedule and figure out when will be the best times for you to write.  Are you the early morning, before everyone else wakes up kind of writer?  Do you write on your lunch break?  Or are you the type that likes to write at the end of the day, when you're winding down?
• Make a budget.  If you'll be going to a lot of write-ins, don't forget to budget for the added expense of all those extra coffees, pastries, meals, and gas!  It adds up quickly.  If you're on a tight budget, be sure to look for write-ins at libraries and other venues where you won't be tempted to spend money.
• Warn your friends and family.  No matter how many years you've done NaNoWriMo, it never hurts to remind the people in your life that you'll be less available for the month of November.  Set the expectation now and you'll make it easier to decline social invitations and extra work for the next 30 days.

Of course, this post is coming a bit later than I had planned, thanks to my cat's illness taking a lot of my time.  Prepping should actually start earlier in the month, especially if you do like to outline and worldbuild ahead of November.  But it's not too late!  You have this weekend and most of next week to get ready to write in November.

More NaNoWriMo Alternatives: Word Count Trackers

In the last month and a half, I've written extensively about my disillusionment with NaNoWriMo's AI stance, NaNoWriMo alternatives for those who want to continue doing the challenge without supporting the organization, and my region's plans to distance ourselves from HQ and preserve the local writing community.

I've since discovered other NaNoWriMo alternatives for tracking your novel word counts, in November and beyond.  One even enables you to import your past NaNoWriMo projects so you don't lose that data!  Here are my thoughts so far about WriteTrack, TrackBear, and Pacemaker.  I've been using WriteTrack and TrackBear and find them both to be excellent platforms, each with a different set of features; I wish I could combine the two!  Pacemaker sort of combines the best of both, but only in the paid Pro subscription, which is spendy.  And only TrackBear enables you to import your past NaNo projects.

Here are my thoughts on the pros and cons each platform offers:

WriteTrack

WriteTrack is the first tracker I found, and the one I mentioned in my previous post about NaNoWriMo alternatives.  It's a free tracker with a somewhat dated user interface, but don't let that fool you, as it offers some exceptional tools.

Pros:

• Has a color-coded calendar view that is easy to decipher at a glance
• Shows your progress on a status bar and a bar graph
• Gives you the ability to weight days individually, in case you have more or less time to write on certain days, rather than having the same goal for every day
• Provides a live Google Calendar integration that enables you to add your goal word count (and words written for past days) to your Google Calendar
• Has basic social features such as chat rooms and the ability to "friend" people
• Enables you to share your progress bar with a link; friends can view your calendar

Cons:

• Has a clunky UI and graphics
• Embeddable progress bar widget doesn't seem to work

TrackBear

TrackBear is another free platform, but this one looks and feels much more sophisticated than WriteTrack, and it even enables you to bring over your project data from your NaNoWriMo account!  Still, there are features that WriteTrack offers that I will miss if I switch to using TrackBear exclusively.

Pros:

• Has a more modern user interface
• Uses line graphs and heat maps to show progress as well as overall writing habits
• Differentiates between projects (i.e., your novel) and goals (e.g., 50k in November), which is useful if you have a longer term project that you routinely set goals for, or if you want to count words from multiple projects during November
• Enables tracking of things other than words (pages, time, etc.), perfect for those who want to edit or handwrite during November
• Offers a leaderboard feature where you can invite other users to a challenge, which could be used to create a sense of "writing together" for a region or writing group during November
• Enables you to import past NaNoWriMo projects - which is awesome if you're considering deleting your account, so you don't lose all that data

Cons:

• Lacks calendar view, Google Calendar features, and ability to assign weights to different days
• Does not offer a way to share progress other than leaderboards, which require an account to join and view

Pacemaker

While I was planning this blog post I discovered another option, Pacemaker, which looks at first glance like an ideal combination of WriteTrack and TrackBear.  Unfortunately, the free version lacks a lot of the features of the free platforms already mentioned above.  Pro is pricey at $8 per month, and it appears you'll lose past project data if you ever drop your subscription.

Pros:

• Combines the more modern look and feel of TrackBear with the calendar views, calendar integration, and weighted days of WriteTrack
• Enables project checklists, basically to-do lists for your novel and goals that are tracked alongside your word count goals
• Offers the ability to share your work in both calendar form and widgets
• Supports large group challenges

Cons:

• Free subscription limits you to two free projects (additional are available at $5 each) and requires you to delete finished projects
• Calendar integration requires a downloaded, static file, so it won't update daily goals automatically based on past days' word counts
• Past projects will be lost if you ever drop your subscription, since the free level doesn't allow archiving
• Does not import past NaNoWriMo data

The Ideal Work Count Tracker

My current plan is to use both WriteTrack and TrackBear for a couple of months, especially during November, to see which I prefer... and to determine whether using both together is workable long term.  Overall I'm leaning more toward TrackBear: I like that I was able to import my NaNoWriMo data, I like the sophisticated UI and graphs, and I like the fact that I can track both overall projects and shorter term goals.

I have no intention of using Pacemaker, as the free level is all but useless and the subscription only offers slightly more than the other two (free) platforms.  The goal of the free level is rather transparently geared toward driving paid subscriptions, which you're then locked into if you don't want to lose your past project data.

Of course, none of these solutions perfectly fit what I want.  My ideal word count tracker would have a combination of features from these three platforms:

• All the features of TrackBear, including the ability to import past NaNoWriMo projects and differentiation between projects and goals
• The calendar view and weighted days of WriteTrack and Pacemaker
• The ability to share a progress bar as in WriteTrack (if it worked correctly), and a link to the calendar view as in Pacemaker
• Low cost

It's not that I mind paying for something that is worthwhile, and actually I plan on donating to whatever I settle on using, both in November and long term.  But I can't afford subscriptions for everything in my life, and $8 a month is steep for a platform that doesn't fully meet my needs.  Maybe if Pacemaker ticked all the boxes and allowed you to keep archived projects with the free level, I'd consider it.  As things stand, TrackBear seems to offer the most features and the best UI for the cost of $0, and if they added a calendar view and sharing options they'd be nearly perfect.

Is NaNoWriMo's Countdown Tone Deaf?

A week or so ago, many of us (now former) Municipal Liaisons noticed that NaNoWriMo had a countdown to November up on their website.  I screencapped this a couple of days ago, so the countdown is not up to date for today.

Is it just me, or is this completely tone deaf?  There has been a massive outcry in the community against NaNoWriMo's AI statements, and many of us have been exploring alternatives to NaNoWriMo in the weeks since.  And yet, with no mention of any of that, they throw a countdown up on the website.

Today, finally, NaNo HQ addressed the issue with an email blast to the entire community.  It was, as all the statements posted online have been, a bunch of pandering and gaslighting.

This ignores completely that the major difference between this statement and last year's statement is that last year's statement on AI clearly (and accurately) points out that using generative AI to write your entire novel "would defeat the purpose of the challenge."

Then there was the claim that they've overhauled the volunteer system to bring it into compliance:

I guess technically cutting loose your ~800 volunteers does bring the program into compliance, because now there are no volunteers to comply with any legal restrictions.  But at that point you don't actually have ~800 volunteers anymore.

As far as I know, not a single ML has actually been restored as of yet, and it's unlikely to happen in the next month.  There's significant speculation within the community that NaNoWriMo is trying things out without the MLs this year to see if they can make it work without the local community representatives and the expense we represent (mainly in the form of free stickers for our region's participants, and ML goodies such as annual pins recognizing our contributions).

The staffing changes claim is a hoot, because the impression I got was that the staff actually unanimously quit, rather than being let go for their involvement.  If that's not the case, there was significant gaslighting coming from the Interim Executive Director at the time of the "staffing changes," who told the MLs that our usual point of contact was "on leave," and only informed us that she had quit after she was supposed to have returned from leave.

Also, "staffing changes" is misleading because it implies that staff has been replaced.  As far as I know, HQ consists right now of the Interim Executive Director and maybe a programmer or two.  And the staff page is also down, which certainly implies that they don't want us to know this.

The email ends with a bunch more gaslighting and a call for donations.

The numbers read like resume bullet points or executive summaries, and are clearly designed to make it sound like NaNoWriMo has been communicating better than they have been.  Unfortunately, just because an email has been sent out doesn't mean it has communicated anything it should have.  Additionally, the part about it being possible to participate "if" your region doesn't have an ML is noteworthy for a couple of reasons: One, as I said above, I don't believe any region has had an ML reinstated, and two, it seems to support the theory that HQ is seeing if perhaps the community organizers aren't needed after all.

Finally, the call for donations in the signature is, just like the countdown on the website appearing before any communications went out to the community, tone deaf.  What exactly are we donating for?  I've seen posts indicating that educators may not even have access to the resources of the Young Writers Program anymore, and that program was always a significant part of what we were funding when we donated.  With that and the community outreach program in limbo, what exactly is left to support?  Right now NaNoWriMo is little more than a word count tracking website run by a backyard nonprofit with a skeleton crew, and as I mentioned in my post regarding NaNoWriMo alternatives, there are other ways to track word count in November.

I will be writing a novel this November as always, but this year my volunteer efforts will be better spent picking up the shattered pieces of our community that HQ left us with when they dismantled the ML program.

NaNoWriMo Alternatives

I wrote recently about the outcry against NaNoWriMo's endorsement of AI and fallout within the community.  I'm honestly not sure NaNoWriMo will come back from this.  After the crisis last year, it seems like the staff has dwindled to potentially just one person, the Interim Executive Director.  That could have been survivable with time and a dedicated new staff, but the organization has felt badly mishandled this year, culminating in the endorsement of AI.

So if you are feeling like you can't in good conscience participate in NaNoWriMo again, and are mourning the loss of that experience and community, you are not alone.  Thankfully we, the community, can refuse to let NaNoWriMo take us down with it.  Here are a few resources you can use to replace what NaNoWriMo offered.

The Local NaNoWriMo Community

NaNoWriMo has been through some major changes right now.  MLs (Municipal Liaisons, the ones responsible for actually running each region) have been disbanded and are awaiting reinstatement as HQ (somday?) implements a more structured volunteer system, complete with background checks and ID verification.  While that was supposed to be implemented this year, there doesn't seem to be any movement on that front.

As a result, many MLs were faced with determining how best to contact their region and keep it together even before the AI endorsement got everyone all riled up.  We no longer have the ability to email our regions, so we're having to depend on our unofficial channels for reaching participants.  If you know your region has a Facebook page or group, a Discord server, or if they tend to use the region page's chat box (which is still active) on the NaNoWriMo website, check in!  If you had contact information for other wrimos, reach out!  Share information and get in touch with your MLs in any way possible.  Chances are your MLs are stressing about how to contact everyone, and one more person making contact would help to ease their worries.

It's important to remember that the community is still there, and there's no reason we have to give it up.  For now my region has opted to continue doing the noveling challenge in November, so that we can hold events for wrimos who are still participating in the official event, as well as rebels who are moving away from the organization.  For us, the important thing is to keep the community together, as we've always had a very active community in our region.

Online Word Count Trackers

I have not deleted my account on NaNoWriMo's website for several reasons, but I haven't used their word count tracker since news of the AI announcement broke.  I love having a word count tracker to show me my progress, so this was one of the first things I wanted to replace after making a plan for our community.

I've done a variety of other things in the past, back in the days when the NaNoWriMo word count trackers weren't available year round, such as reporting word count in blog posts and using this simple word count meter to give a visual display.  However I desperately wanted something better, something I didn't have to generate the code for and insert manually every time.

This time I found WriteTrack, an impressive system that enables you to create multiple projects, have friends on the site, and a variety of other NaNoWriMo-esque features.  I especially love the fact that it displays everything in a calendar, with updated word count goals for every day based on the words written so far.  In fact, it exports to a Google Calendar, which you can add to your account so that your word count goal shows at the top of every day's events.  And they update, too!

There's also a link to a progress bar that you can share with people.  I've been trying to get the embedding feature to work, but without much luck yet.  Click here to see my progress bar for Amnesia and the sequel (all rolled into one word count for now).

WriteTrack is free, but there's a donation button.  If I keep using it, I'll donate what I would have given to NaNoWriMo, as a thank-you for being there for us when NaNoWriMo failed us so spectacularly.  So far it's looking like I will be using it, as I really like the features.

Write-Ins

You know, there's nothing that says NaNoWriMo owns the concept of write-ins.  If you find, like I do, that regular write-ins help you to keep you motivated and productive, set some up of your own!  Even if it's just you and one other local writing friend, pick a time and place and start meeting regularly to get some words in.  If you do it in a place where other writers frequent, or if you put the word out among writing friends and the local NaNoWriMo community that you have a year-round write-in, most likely you'll get new people joining.  We've had some people only come once and decide it's not for them, but we've also gained others who come every time.

Online Community

If in-person write-ins aren't your thing, there are still plenty of ways to get words written with other writers.  Our region of NaNoWriMo has an established Discord server that sees activity year-round, and we've even added a bot to the server for running virtual writing sprints.  Other platforms can also be useful for supporting virtual writing communities in lieu of NaNoWriMo.  For instance, you could create a Facebook group and use group chats or video events to run virtual write-ins or writing sprints.

If nothing else, NaNoWriMo has shown us that writing does not have to be a solitary thing, and that relying on a social writing community can actually be beneficial.  But that doesn't mean the community has to be NaNoWriMo's.  Even if you're uneasy about participating in NaNoWriMo after the AI endorsement or the other scandals, don't give up on writing or the community!  Find or build your own community.

I'll post with more alternative resources if I find anything else worthwhile.  In the meantime, feel free to friend me on WriteTrack!  I'm KatharineSwan, no spaces.

NaNoWriMo's AI-Fueled Downfall

It's been a rough few days in NaNo-land.

For those who haven't seen the news yet, NaNoWriMo shot themselves in the foot a few days ago by endorsing (or at least refusing to condemn) using AI tools to write your NaNoWriMo novel (original statement).  A lot of us feel like this defeats the purpose of the challenge to write 50,000 words in a month, because if you can just have AI do it, what's the point of challenging yourself?

I think the key words here are challenging yourself.

NaNoWriMo's official statement is vague, and you might note that it doesn't say generative AI.  In fact, it doesn't really specify any type of AI tool, of which there are many valid ones, such as grammar checkers, speech-to-text, editing software, and name generators.  But I think it's important to note what the statement does not say: It never says you can't use generative AI, and since NaNoWriMo's entire challenge is to write your novel, I think that's important.

It's also noteworthy that while HQ has revised the statement once already, they have not revised it to specify the types of AI they mean, even though they pointed out in an email to author Cass Morris that they didn't say generative AI.  Interesting that while they told her that in an email, they didn't bother revising the original statement accordingly, isn't it?

The answer may be found in their sponsorship.  As many other sources have already noted, NaNoWriMo is sponsored by ProWritingAid, an AI-based service for writers.  I think it's clear HQ didn't want to offend their sponsor with their answer.  Unfortunately, they've lost other sponsors since making their statement.  Ellipsus stepped down as a NaNoWriMo sponsor, and while Freewrite hasn't made a similar announcement, The Mary Sue noted that Freewrite was no longer a NaNoWriMo sponsor either.  And I noticed today that Ninja Writers has dropped off the list of NaNoWriMo's sponsors since last night, too.  (For reference, this was the list of sponsors just before the story broke.)

Incidentally, the statement from ProWritingAid in this article makes it sound like they're not too pleased with NaNoWriMo's stance on AI.

As you can imagine from a community of creatives, people are infuriated with NaNoWriMo's stance.  As the Literary Hub rightly noted, NaNoWriMo pissed off the whole internet.  Several authors have stepped down from NaNoWriMo's writers board in fury.  The disability community is furious at the implications that they couldn't write a novel without help.  And rumors, possibly driven by a comment from Maureen Johnson, are circulating that NaNoWriMo novels could be stolen for AI training.

To make things worse, this is all following a particularly rough couple of years for NaNoWriMo.  A couple of years ago, users realized that one of their sponsors was a predatory self-publishing service.  And last year, HQ came under fire for not handling well (or at all) accusations of predatory behavior towards underaged writers on the forums.  The latter scandal resulted in the board getting involved.

Whew, I thought.  At least that will be handled.

Unfortunately, "handling" it ended up with nearly the entire staff leaving or being let go (no idea which), the former board president stepping down to fill the position of Interim Executive Director, and a complete restructure of the volunteer system that puts 900 local volunteers in charge of their local regions.  I understand the need for better checks and balances in the volunteer system, but that felt mishandled too, to the point that we've all been cut loose and are still waiting to be reinstated, less than two months before the start of NaNoWriMo.

In other words, it's pretty safe to say that NaNoWriMo will be run without the help of their Municipal Liaisons this year.  And as far as I can tell, HQ is currently a one-woman show, or at least nearly so.  The staff page from the website is gone, and to my knowledge we have yet to see any evidence that anyone other than their Interim Executive Director is answering communications.

I've tried to remain optimistic throughout all of this, standing up for HQ even when most other MLs were raging against them.  But this last thing, endorsing AI to write your novel, is too much for me.  My heart is broken.  I've put 9 years of volunteer work and 18 years of writing into NaNoWriMo, and I've always believed in their goals of promoting literacy and encouraging amateur writers.  Endorsing AI feels like they've betrayed their non-profit's mission statement and the goals behind their 25-year history.

Their Young Writers Program mission statement reads (emphasis added):

National Novel Writing Month believes in the transformational power of creativity. We provide the structure, community, and encouragement to help people find their voices, achieve creative goals, and build new worlds—on and off the page.

That stings, don't it? 

It's not true that our NaNo novels will be used to train AI (NaNoWriMo hasn't required a word count validation in years, and even when they did, it was easy to use a lorem ipsum generator to upload instead).  Even ProWritingAid states that their users' work is safe:

For grammar checking, once checking has been completed, all submitted texts and their improvements will be deleted. When using ProWritingAid, your texts will not be used to improve the quality of our services.

Even so, many wrimos (as we tend to call ourselves) no longer feel comfortable aligning ourselves with NaNoWriMo.   A lot of participants have already publicly stated that they've deleted their NaNoWriMo accounts.  And while I'm hoping the Interim Executive Director will recognize that she's destroyed the organization's credibility and step down as Interim Director before she does any more damage, my fear is that she will instead dig in and try to maintain her untenable position.  If she does so, I have no doubt that NaNoWriMo will go down with her.

While NaNoWriMo's future hangs in the balance, many of us are looking for alternatives.  I don't want to give up the writing community or the challenge, so I will be looking for ways to continue in an unofficial capacity.  More information on that to come!

Update 9/6/2024:

Today NaNoWriMo issued a letter to the community, and revised their statement on AI.

It doesn't change that this was handled badly and that I've lost faith in the organization.  The statement actually feels a little condescending, like it's saying, "We didn't know we had to tell you the full story behind our decision."  And ultimately, it is not a strong enough retraction to heal the harm done to our community.  I think it would have needed to take a position such as "using AI to generate your novel would not be in keeping with the original challenge," even if it only relegated generative AI users to "rebels" instead of followers of the traditional challenge.

Overall, this response from NaNoWriMo feels like too little, too late, and with lots of condescension thrown in.

Using the NaNoWriMo Site for Tracking Non-NaNoWriMo Writing Projects

I made an interesting discovery this year: You can now use the NaNoWriMo website to track other writing projects throughout the year, rather than only being able to use it to track progress during regular and Camp NaNoWriMo in November, April, and July.

So this year, following NaNoWriMo, I created a new project for my continuing rewrites after November ended.  I was unfortunately unable to just create a new goal for the same project I'd used during NaNoWriMo, but this works just as well since I had to adjust the word count to eliminate the words for some related writing I did during November that wasn't actually part of the novel.

I am really enjoying this new feature of the NaNoWriMo website.  I like having a place where I can keep all of my writing projects catalogued in one place, and track progress in all of them.  Plus you're able to set an end date for your goal, and the site calculates out how many words you need each day, based on current progress and end goal - just like it does during NaNoWriMo.  I am really looking forward to using this feature more than just during NaNo and Camp.

The one feature I wish it had was the ability to put progress bars on your website or blog.  In the "old days" of NaNoWriMo, there were word count widgets that pulled your word count from the NaNo site and allowed you to share your progress on your blog.  They've since done away with those, but I really wish they still had them, especially now.

For now I'm using a hybrid approach of updating my word count on the NaNoWriMo website to take advantage of the graph and tracking features there, and also using a word count widget I found online some years ago to show my progress on my author blog.

NaNoWriMo Incoming!

If you look at my resume, you'll see I'm not shy about volunteering my time when I care deeply about something.  One of the places I choose to volunteer my time is for NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month.

I blog about NaNoWriMo often, as it's an annual event that's close to my heart.  If you haven't seen my previous posts, National Novel Writing Month is actually an international challenge to write a 50,000-word novel - or 50,000 words of a novel - during the month of November.  It started out as a tongue-in-cheek writing challenge to show that writing a novel doesn't have to be super serious or difficult, but over the past 20ish years it has blossomed into a massive undertaking for millions.

I still run across people who don't know what NaNoWriMo is, but increasingly more often, the people I talk to around this time of year actually do know what it is.  I find both equally mind boggling.

As a volunteer Municipal Liaison, I function as an organizer for the local region, including writing email blasts, organizing local events, communicating with Come Write In partners (businesses who are offering to host events), and maintaining a calendar and social media presence for our local participants.

We've been in full NaNo prep mode for weeks, although for us NaNo prep is organizing our big kickoff party and coordinating with Come Write In partners to get other events set up.  We already have events going up on the calendar, not just our kickoff on October 31st (we start writing at midnight), but also write-ins throughout the month.

I can't believe that November is only a little over a week away!  It's coming up so fast.  For the most part I'll be blogging about NaNoWriMo over on my book blog, RubyRansome.com, but I'm sure it'll leak over onto this blog as well.  NaNoWriMo all but takes over my life in November!

The Challenges of a Virtual NaNoWriMo

I've already talked a little bit about how covid impacted workers in 2020.  I didn't work in an office, so it didn't really change anything for me there, but I experienced many of the same (but different) challenges in November of 2020 as an ML for NaNoWriMo.

We knew earlier in the year that HQ was mandating virtual only for NaNoWriMo.  Even though most places were opening up, NaNoWriMo didn't want any of their events to be responsible for people getting sick and potentially dying, so we weren't allowed to plan, promote, or even approve any in-person events.

This was a challenge for our region, which is typically a busy and well-attended region at local, in-person events.  We had a pretty good social media presence already, though, so we built off of that.  We offered virtual write-ins at the same times as many of our common, popular in-person write-ins, using a variety of platforms.  Some write-ins were on Zoom, some were on Facebook video chat, some were in Discord.  We also held a virtual kickoff party on Zoom.

Participation dropped, of course, which we expected, but not too badly.  We still had anywhere from four to ten people at most of the write-ins.  We didn't do as many write-ins, just a few a week instead of the one or more a day we were used to - which was actually to be expected, since we were planning and hosting all of the write-ins, rather than wrimos planning some of them as happens with in-person write-ins.

Last year ended up being virtual as well, and we noticed more of a drop-off in participation last year.  The feeling was that most of our local participants had the stamina to make it through one year of virtual, but not two.  There were many write-ins that weren't attended at all. 

We get it.  Some people really like the virtual format, and we've had Discord write-ins for years.  But others struggle.  For a lot of wrimos, the social aspect of in-person write-ins is what sustains motivation and momentum for the entire month of November, and virtual events just aren't the same.

Don't get me wrong, I think some people love the virtual write-ins and will still attend them.  I just think we'll do better with a combination of virtual and in-person.

This year will be our first in-person NaNoWriMo following covid.  HQ wants us to continue to offer a virtual component too, so we're planning on still doing a few virtual write-ins.  But we're excited to be able to offer in-person events again, as we feel like that's the life and blood of a successful NaNoWriMo.

Will participation still be down a little, even in our busy region?  HQ expects it to be, although I won't be surprised if we get a surge of participation at first from wrimos who have been anxiously awaiting the return of in-person events.  We'll have to wait and see how the forum and social media participation ramps up closer to November.  It's only September, after all, and not everyone is thinking about NaNoWriMo yet!

Volunteering as a Municipal Liaison for NaNoWriMo

In my last post, I talked about what NaNoWriMo is, and what I've done with it over the years.  In addition to participating as a writer every year, I am also a Municipal Liaison, known as an ML, which basically just means I'm an organizer for my region, the Denver region.

I had been doing NaNo for a number of years when I decided to apply as an ML.  I was already organizing write-ins and was quite active in the local events for our region.  I started "MLing" in 2015, which means that this will be my eighth year as an ML.

Eight years!  I can hardly believe it.  When I started, I was replacing one of our region's two MLs, as she was moving.  She later moved back, and since we have a busy region and really need more than just a couple MLs, she rejoined the team.  (More recently, a longtime ML from about ten years ago has moved back to the Denver area, so we're hoping she'll rejoin the team next year, too.)

As I keep mentioning, we have a busy region here in Denver.  The last couple years have been all virtual due to covid, but before that, we always had a kickoff party Halloween night from 10pm until 2am (so that we could start writing right at midnight), and at least one write-in nearly every day of the month throughout November.

A write-in, by the way, is where a group of wrimos get together and... you guessed it... write.  We do this at book stores, coffee shops, libraries, cafes, college community areas, and pretty much just anywhere that'll put up with us. Most write-ins last two to three hours, and if you have a successful time, you can easily leave with your daily word count (or more!) finished.  They're fantastic for keeping up motivation, spirits, and word count.

As an ML, it's our job to run this busy month of moving parts.  We put a fair bit of planning into the kickoff party especially, usually starting weeks if not months in advance.  We don't have to plan all the write-ins - wrimos do some of that too - but we plan quite a few of them.  We also have a calendar we manage for all of the write-ins and events, a regional forum within the NaNoWriMo forum that we have to stay on top of, regular emails we send out to participants, and social media presences to maintain.

In addition to all of that, there are extra things that we often do in our region.  One of my co-MLs has developed a relationship with Denver's version of Comic Con (the name has changed a few times since they had to stop using the name Comic Con, but the con itself has been the same).  We get a community table there nearly every year, where we hang out and educate people about NaNoWriMo.  We also often speak on panels at the con about doing NaNoWriMo and other aspects of novel writing.

It's not a huge volunteer job, especially as so much of the "job" coincides with what I would be doing anyway (planning and going to write-ins), but it's nothing to sneeze at, either.  I feel like the past seven-soon-to-be-eight years have taught me a lot of skills that have benefitted me both professionally and personally, such as more confidence with public speaking, better people skills, more networking opportunities, and experience organizing events.  Plus, as funny as it sounds, it has given me writing experience I wouldn't have gotten as easily doing what I do: It encouraged me to keep up with my fiction writing (my first love), and also gave me an opportunity to practice my writing for emails and mailings, which I don't do a lot of in my "day job."

As I write this, we're in the early stages of NaNo prep season.  While our wrimos are starting to plot and plan, we're ordering stickers from headquarters and getting a location and other details nailed down for our kickoff party (planned way in advance because we require a venue that can handle anywhere from 60-70 people, to as many as 130 when November 1st falls on a weekend).

This year's NaNoWriMo will be an especially big deal, and I'll talk about why in my next post.

NaNoWriMo: Just What Is It, Anyway?

When I was going through my posts the other day, I came across all of my old NaNoWriMo posts.  With NaNoWriMo coming up again, and considering the major overhaul in my blog after a long hiatus (and most likely the loss of all my old readership), I decided I had better explain NaNoWriMo again.

NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, and is frequently shortened to NaNo or nano (and its participants are often called wrimos).  Despite the name, this is actually an international event now, which takes place every November.  It's a self-challenge (meaning it's not a competition against others) to write a novel, or 50,000 words of a novel, in the month of November.

If you do NaNoWriMo fairly strictly, you're not to even start the novel until November, although you can start outlining and worldbuilding before then.  You can start writing on the stroke of midnight on November 1st in your time zone, and need to have finished by 11:59pm on November 30th in order to "win."

NaNo has been going on for a long time, I think around 20 years now.  I started participating in NaNo way back in 2006, when I had just a year of freelancing full-time under my belt.  I "won" that first year, had a number of failed years after that, and then "won" again with the completion of my 1920s vampire novel, Ruby Ransome, in 2011.  I was a "rebel" that year, since I started with a novel already in progress, although I only counted words written in November toward my NaNoWriMo word count.

I've actually rebelled a lot of years.  NaNoWriMo is an incredible motivational tool, so I've used it to kick start all kinds of writing projects, not all of them novels.  I love bending rules, so I've used NaNo to increase my blogging, to work on nonfiction projects, and to write more for myself just in general.  As a freelance writer, I find that the hardest thing is to work on my own projects, especially when I have paying client work waiting in the wings.  As a result, I have lots of unfinished projects forever parked on the back burner, and NaNoWriMo helps me make progress on those.  I don't always "win," but I figure as long as I get writing done that I wouldn't have otherwise, it's a win in my book.

That's what NaNoWriMo is and what I've written with it over the years.  In my next post, I'll talk more about my volunteer work with NaNoWriMo.