NaNoWriMo officially* announced their dissolution on Monday, leaving many writers in mourning over the demise of a once-great institution. If this was news to you and you are still mourning, please close this tab. I don’t wish to subject anyone in mourning to my joy that nanowrimo dot org is dead and we can all move on to the next thing. I was able to process this loss well over a year ago, and am excited to move on.

*Okay, technically “Kilby Blades,” NaNo’s (former?) interim executive director, made this announcement from her own YouTube channel, not the official NaNoWriMo YouTube channel.

No, AI did not kill NaNoWriMo

It was dead before the AI faux pas last year. That just happened to be the thing that caught media attention after several big-name authors publicly distanced themselves from NaNoWriMo over the issue. I’m glad that happened and those authors made it public, because it brought the far more important problems with NaNoWriMo to the attention of the general public. The demise was already well underway in 2023 when the board of directors stepped in to take control of the organization from a staff who badly mismanaged child endangerment situations on their online spaces. At first, it seemed like board chair “Kilby” (in scare quotes, because that’s just one of her pennames), was going to help fix NaNoWriMo, but almost immediately she started alienating everyone around her, a community who trusted her, and many, many qualified community members who stepped up to help.

If you’re interested in reading the full story, here are links to two (exhaustive) sources:

https://www.tumblr.com/the-nanowrimo-chronicles

http://www.nanoscandal.com/

And a truly excellent mainstream media piece in the Guardian.

For those of us have been following along since 2023, NaNoWriMo has been dead this whole time, but “Kilby” has been parading around in its corpse for the past year and a half and we haven’t been able to properly bury it until now.

A Celebration of Life

I took down all my old stickers from my bulletin board and reminisced fondly of the different Novembers (and Aprils and Julys) they commemorate. I put my enamel pins from the years I was a Municipal Liaison (volunteer who coordinated local NaNoWriMo events) back onto my tote bag. I had spent the past year and a half cancelling “KilByWriMo,” but now that NaNo is actually dead and buried, these pre-“Kilby” mementos bring me joy again.

NaNoWriMo was a good thing, once upon a time. I know the original writing challenge – 50,000 words in 30 days – had a lot of haters, but it was really good to me. For one, it taught me excellent writing habits. By which I mean habit-habits. I give 60% credit to NaNoWriMo for making me the writer I am today. (The other 40% goes to my dissertation advisor, but I’ll write about that another time.) I even wrote a guest blog post for NaNoWriMo during the early days of the covid-19 pandemic about writing habits I learned from the challenge. (The link is to the Wayback Machine version in case NaNo’s blog, you know, vanishes). I wrote another guest blog post on a similar topic more recently here.

I also wrote several successful first drafts of novels during NaNo challenges. Quest for the Historical Arthur was my 2017 NaNo, and Breaking the Silence started out as my 2012 and I rewrote it over two November challenges in 2021 and 2022. I also wrote a successful first draft in 2020, but that one’s on the back burner for now

NaNoWriMo wasn’t just the challenge, it was also – and I can’t stress this enough – the community. The community on the website. I felt like NaNo staffers were part of that community for a long time. Especially my first decade participating, from 2004-2014.

The heart of the community was the forums. I showed up in late September every year, even the years I didn’t plan on writing a novel, just to check in. I recognized some old faces but mostly met new people. We talked about writing, planning, habits, software, hardware – all the things that united us in our November writing challenge. I met my first in-person writing friends in DC, Ann Arbor, and Erie through the forums as well. NaNo really did provide a great service, once upon a time, and I will remember it fondly.

Long Live…

Now that “Kilby” has finally shed the reanimated corpse of NaNoWriMo and it can finally rest in peace, what does NaNoWriMo mean today?

It’s not an organization, a website, or a particular online community. It also isn’t “just” an outdated challenge or a hashtag or a meme.

So what is it?

It’s the same thing it always has been – writers supporting writers. In all ways, but specifically with their writing goals.

As for goals, the folks over at Trackbear.app took about eight minutes to come up with a free word count tracker that not only replaces, but far exceeds in utility, the one that NaNoWriMo offered. (Quick – create a Trackbear account and auto-import all your project data from NaNo before the Dot Org disappears!)

As for community, well, there are a whole bunch to choose from now! The one I belong to is the Rogue Writers, and it’s a great place to be. It isn’t as big as NaNoWriMo was, and the communication is on Discord, which is a real change of pace from static forums, but I love it. Some of my Rogue Writers friendships date back to November of 2023 when we all scrambled to find an off-site space to process the demise of NaNo. And I’m still meeting new people there every day.

In closing: mourn the loss of NaNoWriMo in the way that makes the most sense for you. Take your time. And then keep writing. Keep tracking goals, if that’s your thing. And find your community. It’s out there. Long live NaNoWriMo!