Reluctance? How is this possible? I’ve done this exercise in raw creativity every year since 2008. That’s 17 years. What’s there to be reluctant about?

Last year, right before NaNoWriMo–National Novel Writing Month–I received an email from the “head office” sent to all municipal liaisons. (A municipal liaison is a volunteer who organizes NaNoWriMo events in a specific region.) Author Allison K. Garcia and I have been co-MLs for six or more years. The email explained that all the regional forums as well as the main NaNoWriMo forum would be closed down and unusable during the 2023 NaNoWriMo. The email further said that more information would be forthcoming.

It wasn’t. Not until February of 2024. That meant, of course, that rumors were rife.

The forums, which allowed participants to chat with each other, had been popular, almost existing as a writer’s group with members from all over the world. I’d never used the forums much, because I’m not a forum person, but Allison and I had used ours for the Shenandoah Valley Region to announce events and the like. We mostly relied on our local NaNoWriMo Facebook Group, Shenandoah Valley Wrimos, to conduct sprints, hold little writing contests, post message of encouragement, and the like. The past few years, some members used Discord for sprints and chats.

So, with the forums closed, we could still communicate with our members, but the closing of the forums without much explanation caused rife speculation.

NaNoWriMo was going out of business.

There’d been a hostile takeover of NaNoWriMo, and they only wanted “professional” writers.

Politicians, parents, government, take your pick, didn’t want freethinking and writing to continue.

NaNoWriMo was suppressing creativity.

It was almost endless, each rumor more fantastical than the last, like QAnon for writers. Finally, the explanation arrived in our inboxes.

It seems that for some period of time, predators and “groomers” had been using the forums to attempt to human traffic young writers, under 18, girls and boys. Many, many complaints had been filed with NaNoWriMo’s administrative office. It wasn’t clear if the complaints were ignored, but that seems to be the case with such heinous activity going on for a while.

Now, I’m horrified NaNoWriMo forums were being used for this, that a place where young writers thought they’d be safe turned into a nightmare. I hope NaNoWriMo cooperated with authorities to identify who the offenders were and that they’re prosecuted accordingly.

Now, the forums, neither the regional ones or the national one, are administered by anyone on NaNoWriMo’s payroll. Municipal Liaisons were, we found out, responsible for administering the regional forums. Since most of the questionable behavior was on regional forums, national NaNoWriMo pushed the blame down on the municipal liaisons for not monitoring/administering the forums properly.

A responsibility we didn’t know we had. It was obvious the blame was being rolled downhill for the main company to avoid liability.

Okay, I get that, but NaNoWriMo promised new regulations for forums and for municipal liaisons. When those finally arrived in June of 2024, more speculation had occurred. A copy of the proposed changes had leaked beforehand and caused outrage for some of its more draconian rules.

The ML “contract” went from a one-page Google Form to a multipage document that needed a lawyer’s interpretation, but basically, when the forums were turned back on, they would be the MLs’ responsibility to assure, among other responsibilities, that:

• No one under 18 participated in a forum or attended a regional, in-person or online event.
• All communications in forums or at events had to be in English.
• MLs needed to affirm they were “native English speakers.”
• If a region had a Facebook Page or Group, they had to remove any mention of NaNoWriMo from them.
• If MLs had an event with a guest speaker or that was otherwise open to the public, e.g., in a public library, MLs were responsible for obtaining background checks on anyone who might have contact with attendees–at our expense.
• MLs would have to have background checks (not a bad idea)–at our expense.

There were more restrictions, but that’s enough for you to get the drift that, basically, if any of the predatory activity recurred, it was solely on the heads of the MLs. Now, that’s a lot to ask of a volunteer.

Upon receiving this information, many, many MLs indicated they’d no longer be MLs, myself and my co-ML included. Well, NaNoWriMo decided that all MLs would be “decommissioned” and would have to reapply. If regions ended up with no MLs, NaNoWriMo would contact members of that region and ask them to volunteer.

Okay, fine.

The dust from that settled, and a number of my writer friends who’d been long-time participants like me indicated they wouldn’t participate at all and would close out their NaNoWriMo accounts. I considered that but wasn’t yet sure I wanted to go that far. I would write my 50,000 words in 30 days, but I wouldn’t set up a project or update it on the site.

Then, another shoe dropped.

In early fall, another email from NaNoWriMo to all members came out. Several writers had inquired, it said, if they could use AI to write their NaNoWriMo novel. NaNoWriMo’s decision was yes, and that anyone who opposed that position was classist and ableist. Meaning if we objected to the use of AI, we were denying NaNoWriMo to people who couldn’t afford computers and people with disabilities where they couldn’t type or dictate.

More uproar from those of us who sweated every one of those 50,000 words in 30 days from our overworked brains. For me, it was the straw. I would take down my account, boycott the merch, and do this the way I’d always done it–1,667 words a day from my brain for 30 days, and f**k NaNoWriMo.

Then, came the apology. The point of NaNoWriMo, this email said, was for a writer to create, from their own imagination, a 50,000-word draft of a novel. Of course, they had no way to police anyone using AI but would encourage participants not to use it. NaNoWriMo was sorry for the tone of the previous email. Thank you and have a successful NaNoWriMo.

Okay, so I won’t delete my account, and I’ll use it to track my progress, but it will be with a sour taste in my mouth.

As with any large, charitable organization with an international reach, NaNoWriMo experienced issues that perhaps they couldn’t anticipate. However, operating an extensive network of forums without admins who knew what to look for, to me, was asking for trouble. The whole CYA of pushing blame onto volunteer MLs and thinking we wouldn’t respond with indignation was plain stupid.

I’m not happy with NaNoWriMo management right now, and I’m not the only one. But the last 17 years have stimulated my creativity beyond anything I could have imagined. Without NaNoWriMo as a starting point, quite a few of my novels would never have seen the light of day.

To quote (with some artistic license) Mr. Knightly from Jane Austen’s Emma, “Badly done, NaNoWriMo, badly done.”