NaNoWriMo, the US-based nonprofit organisation that challenged people to write a novel in a month, has announced it is closing down after 20 years.
NaNoWriMo – an abbreviation of National Novel Writing Month – fostered an online community of participants aiming to write 50,000 words of fiction in November. It began informally in 1999 before becoming a nonprofit in 2006. Each year, tens of thousands signed up to the organisation’s flagship programme.
On Monday, NaNoWriMo announced its closure to community members via email. A 27-minute YouTube video posted the same day by the organisation’s interim executive director Kilby Blades explained that it had to close due to ongoing financial problems, which were compounded by reputational damage.
In November 2023, several community members complained to the nonprofit’s board, Blades said. They believed that staff had mishandled accusations made in May 2023 that a NaNoWriMo forum moderator was grooming children on a different website.
The moderator was eventually removed, though this was for unrelated code of conduct violations and occurred “many weeks” after the initial complaints. In the wake of this, community members came forward with other complaints related to child safety on the NaNoWriMo sites.
The organisation was also widely criticised last year over a statement on the use of artificial intelligence in creative writing. After stating that it did not support or explicitly condemn any approach to writing, including the use of AI, it said that the “categorical condemnation of artificial intelligence has classist and ableist undertones”.
It went on to say that “not all writers have the financial ability to hire humans to help at certain phases of their writing”, and that “not all brains have same abilities … There is a wealth of reasons why individuals can’t ‘see’ the issues in their writing without help.”
Fantasy author CL Polk said at the time that “NaNo is basically asserting that disabled people don’t have what it takes to create art when they trot out the lie that scorning AI is ableist”.
Though the AI controversy received widespread press coverage, Blades’ video primarily focused on the child safety concerns. She said that NaNoWriMo’s position on AI had been covered “frankly so inaccurately”.
The organisation’s closure “will cause no small amount of grief”, said Blades. NaNoWriMo will keep its websites live for “as long as possible” so that “people can take what they want from their accounts”, but did not specify a date when the sites would shut down.
“We hold no belief that people will stop writing 50,000 words in November,” read Monday’s email. “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.”
