So, NaNoWriMo, huh?
National Novel Writing Month. There are two parts to it: the writing challenge, and the organization. The writing challenge portion of it started back in 1999 when writer Chris Baty and his friends in the San Francisco Bay area decided to tackle the idea of writing 50,000 words in a month. It grew exponentially year after year as more and more writers became aware of the challenge. Fast forward to 2015, and there were over 430,000 participants in 633 different regions worldwide. Some notable published NaNoWriMo novels over the years include: Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, and Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell (one of my favorite authors, by the way).
The other part of NaNoWriMo is the organization itself. A website was built and launched in 2000, when they moved the initial month-long project from July to November. They registered as a nonprofit organization in 2005 after years of progressive growth. After some design changes to the website and the addition of forums in 2011, Chris Baty stepped down as executive director to focus on his full-time writing career. In 2022, the organization had its first controversy regarding two of its sponsors, Inkitt and Manuscript Press. To put it simply, these companies were known for terrible practices involving their contract terms and expensive fees. NaNoWriMo cut ties with both companies in response to the community’s backlash. After the event began in November 2023, the Board of Directors temporarily set the forums to read-only when concerns about staff members engaging with underage participants inappropriately surfaced. The forums were shortly shut down altogether.
Earlier this year, a statement was released in regards to the use of generative AI in creative writing. In it, whoever wrote the piece claimed that those opposed the idea were classist and ableist because, according to them, writers who are disabled or poor NEED AI to write their stories to make them good/better. Again, the community became upset with such sentiments, and NaNoWriMo has since scrubbed their initial posting and replaced it with a half-assed middle-of-the-road response. While no name was connected to the author of these posts, most consider them to have been written by Kilby Blades, the interim director after previous director Grant Faulkner stepped down in 2023, because she is the person who often posts updates to the FAQs section of the NaNoWriMo website.
Due to these controversies in recent years, participant numbers have dropped. Last year, I (unsuccessfully) was one such participant. Upon hearing about what had been going on in some of the forums that led to them being shut down, I stopped updating my daily word counts or going to the website altogether. I was uncertain about if I would return this year, and then all the AI stuff happened. Among so many others, I no longer wish to participate with NaNoWriMo as an organization. I will not be interacting with the website or donating to its annual fundraiser.
That said, I will still be trying to write 50,000 words in the month of November. Why? Because while the vessel will perish, the idea will never die. NaNoWriMo as an organization may be on its last leg, unless it makes several big changes to who they allow as sponsors and how they treat staff and participants. However, the concept of trying to write a novel (or a good chunk of a novel) within one month belongs to us all now. Anyone wanting to engage with this challenge, I suggest finding your local writing group for support and comradery. Some, if not most, are likely former/current NaNoWriMo participants.
As for my project this year, I will be working on Incinerate again. I started writing this novel in April 2022 and am maybe halfway to its conclusion. While I love this project, I would rather not spend another two years on it. As stated in previous posts, I have a problem with productivity that I would very much like to correct. The amount of unfinished tales in my Google Drive is bothering me, but I’ve told myself I can’t round back to them until this one is done (with an exception for the occasional short story here and there). On the positive side for Incinerate, I can finally say that it’s the longest writing project I have word-wise: with 28 chapters in the bag, it currently sits at over 100,000 words. In comparison, The Rokkoh Adventures, which combines the original three novellas and first short story, has just a little more than 80,000 words put together.
Good luck to all my fellow writers out there! And for those interested in diving deeper into the NaNoWriMo situation, I recommend this video to hear from other participants and Municipal Liaisons.
Tyler Gohde 