It's the first blog post of November, and I figured it's only right that I address the absence of NaNoWriMo this year, since the annual event would've taken place this month.
I've been a published author for eight years now. Living in His World of Lies, my first book, dropped in January of 2017. Over the course of those eight years since that first release, I've participated in National Novel Writing Month, also fondly known as NaNoWriMo for short, numerous times. In fact, the first draft of Flirting With Danger was written in two weeks during NaNoWriMo 2022, and the book was released in July the following year.
Brief Overview
For those writers who were not fortunate enough to have heard of or been able to participate in NaNoWriMo, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. The organization started in 1999 as a movement to facilitate writing challenges and became a non-profit in 2006.
The Challenge: To write a complete 50,000-word book in 30 days every year in the month of November.
The organization provided programs outside of NaNoWriMo, such as Camp NaNoWriMo, which was held in April and July of every year. Camp NaNoWriMo was similar to NaNoWriMo--the goal was still to write an entire novel during the "camp." However, it was more flexible in that participating writers were allowed to set their own writing goals. The organization's website provided numerous tools for writers, such as the ability to set goals for projects and update the project with current word counts to help track progress. It also provided a sense of community. As a writer, you were asked to input your location to be added to your regional community. This gave you a group of writers and a few moderators who helped to offer support and the occasional smaller challenges throughout the year. Bottom line is: it was a movement. It was a community. It was an invaluable tool and motivation for writers all over the globe to... Write. The. Book.
The Decline
The NaNoWriMo organization depended on donations for organizations, writers, and generous donors to fund its programs, to continue offering tools and resources, and to keep the website itself operating. NaNo struggled in the past several years from low funding, and this was one of the most significant contributors to its troubles. Add to that situation reports of misconduct by some of the moderators and volunteers and then top it off with an official statement of position by the organization basically condoning the use of AI in writing while attempting to refrain from condemning it, and the downfall seems inevitable. It was a recipe for disaster. Dwindling funding + questionable/ inappropriate moderators x an opinion that pissed off the entire writing community = a swift decline into nonexistence.
My Take
What I can say is that the movement itself--the base and bare core of the organization--will be missed. Still, though, the spirit of it has not died. Though it may not be called NaNoWriMo anymore, all over the world, similar challenges have been created for this month. For a continued sense of community, I suggest joining some of the writer's groups on social media platforms like X, Facebook, Threads, Discord, and BlueSky. BlueSky in particular has an amazing writing community. The platform itself gained most of its followers during the mass exodus from Twitter after Elon Musk acquired the platform and renamed it X, and the X writing community flocked to BlueSky to maintain freedom of speech and freedom from the strict censorship guidelines implemented by Musk.
A community in the literary world is highly important as a writer. Gone are the days when writers could remain anonymous and faceless as they dropped book after book. Even erotica author Zane, who has been writing and publishing since 1997, revealed her identity and put a face with her work in 2004, which was the same year Facebook was created. Writers need to build and belong to a community, one that can help keep them motivated and feed the constant need to improve their writing through review and critique. The NaNoWriMo website provided that sense of community for hundreds of thousands of writers, not just during November, but throughout the year as well. While I definitely don't suggest sending your unpublished, uncopyrighted work out to strangers just because you belong to the same social media group, it's likely you will be able to find just a couple of likeminded writers you can trust to read your work, review and critique it, and offer constructive feedback.
In the way of challenges and tracking, there are numerous websites, programs, and software that offers these kinds of tools. There's no shortage of writers' groups on social media. In these groups you can find word count challenges and writing sprints that are conducted either as a group or individually, and you're most certain to find an accountability partner to keep you on track throughout your writing process. There are also tools built into some of the software and websites geared specifically toward writers. Examples of these are Scrivener and Novlr. Scrivener helps with management of the entire writing process for your project, including setting word count goals, and Novlr offers numerous tools, such as help with setting and tracking goals. Websites such as Dabble and Manuskript offer a variety of tools as well to help keep your work organized and your writing process running smoothly.
Final Thoughts
There are a lot of us out there who have published "NaNoWriMo babies." Though we'll certainly miss not only the event itself, but all the events, tools, and programs NaNoWriMo provided and held every year, the spirit of the movement lives on. November will always be National Novel Writing Month for those of us who have participated in the challenge over the years. There are alternatives to NaNoWriMo and its website, and though you may have to combine a couple of tools, it's well worth it. It's the end of a 26-year-long era, and though we hate to say goodbye to the group that started it all, there are already groups and programs being formed to replace NaNo. Hopefully, it'll grow to be bigger and better than ever!
