NaNoWriMo, the non-profit organization that grew out of the annual tradition National Novel Writing Month, had a solid 25-year run encouraging writers to speedrun the novel writing process, but it has come to an end. On Monday, the organization announced that it would cease operations due to ongoing financial issues, as well as some very public drama that has played out in recent years.
In an email to community members (and shared on Reddit), the organization was pretty thorough in its reasoning. It acknowledged that the organization has had “six years of struggling to sustain itself financially,” which certainly is not unique among arts-based non-profits. A report found that 25% of arts organizations were facing a deficit equal to more than 10% of their budgets in 2023.
Those financial problems may have been in part what drove NaNoWriMo to partner with Inkitt in 2022, which drew backlash from the community—perhaps the first obvious red flag that things weren’t going great. Inkitt, an online publishing platform, was accused by some authors of being a scam and a content slop farm that took advantage of young or new authors.
The drama continued to boil up within NaNoWriMo in 2023 when a content moderator involved with the organization’s Young Writer’s Program forum was accused of running a smut site and grooming underage users. In addition to those claims, users complained about a general lack of attention from moderators that left user reports and complaints unresolved. While the board of the organization could not verify all of the allegations against the moderator accused of grooming, it opted to shut down the forum.
Perhaps the highest profile stumble for NaNoWriMo came last year, though, when the organization issued a statement on the use of artificial intelligence. While the organization said it neither supports nor opposes the use of AI in writing, it did state, “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.”
That did not sit well with many in the NaNoWriMo community, including some disabled members who feel there is a difference between using accommodating tools and generative AI. Authors Maureen Johnson and Daniel José Older resigned from the nonprofit’s board following the statement. Other authors condemned the stance, too, noting that generative AI models were likely trained on their works without permission or compensation.
So, for the first time since 1999, there will be no more NaNoWriMo. If you want to write a full novel over the course of a month, you’ll have to hold yourself accountable now.
