Yep. That’s right. NaNo is Dead.

One of the big hubbubs this week was the news that the organization behind NaNoWriMo is officially dead and honestly? That’s a good thing.

Besides the abuse scandal, followed by the AI scandal, NaNo’s board couldn’t even leave without taking pot-shots at its former supporters.

A video released entitled The State of NaNoWriMo: A Community Update states the details in a lengthy, wordy, redundant, OMG-please-stop-talking almost 28 minute video and basically the TL;DR: amounts to:

Folks overreacted to a “scandal” and stopped donating to us. It’s your fault we can’t keep going, so we’re gonna go home now and cry about it.

I sat through the entire 27:39 minute video, which goes into great detail about how the organization could no longer financially support itself and thus, was shutting its doors. Seeing the numbers is nice and usually important evidence from a non-profit organization but honestly, they had bigger issues than a lack of fundraising.

While COVID hit everyone, including NaNoWriMo, what made the organization unable to recover from lockdown was their inability to protect their members, especially those under-aged members who were abused by NaNo employees. Yes, yes, I know that most of NaNo is made up of volunteers but still, these were folks who signed agreements/contracts to do work for NaNoWriMo so the term fits.

Back when shit first hit the fan, I wrote a lengthy piece called The Fall of the House of NaNoWriMo about what happened and my thoughts on it all. Afterward, I swore I was done with NaNo. Then they doubled down, and I wrote The Fall Continues. When they stirred up the media again with their support of GenAI and claimed disabled people like me needed to steal content to create, I couldn’t help myself. I commented on social media A LOT. I didn’t write another blog post because honestly, I don’t get paid for this, and they don’t need more attention. They don’t need my spoons. What they need is to cease to exist.

But then the death certificate was filed, and everyone began asking me when I was going to write about it. Heavy Sigh. Because I was a former teacher who used NaNo in my classroom, this entire topic is painful for me. It’s hard seeing something that was awesome and helpful to so many, kill itself in some attempt to…I don’t know, please everyone? I’m not exactly sure why the organization tried to grow so fast in such a clumsy manner. Maybe capitalism.

I love you all, and I’m honestly glad that you respect me so much that my opinion on this matters. To date, The Fall of the House of NaNoWriMo has been quoted and linked by thousands of blogs and newspaper articles, which is wild. (I wish my books got that much traction! Seriously!) Part of my frustration, I think, comes from the fact that the board fucked up. They potentially covered up several crimes. People were hurt. 

That should have been the end of the board then and there. They should have gone the way of Neil Gaiman and J.K. Terf-ing. Persona Non Grata.

But it wasn’t their end. The board continually stepped in it until they were drowning and instead of fixing the issues, they victim blamed their way into bankruptcy.

Good riddance.

This organization hurt way too many people (myself included) for me to have any sympathy for them at this point. What began as a great idea, grew too large and outlived its usefulness.

Why do we need a non-profit organization to write a novel? The truth is, we don’t. If you want to write a novel, do it. If you want to challenge yourself and some friends to writing a novel in a month, go for it. You don’t need anyone’s permission.

So those are my two cents on the whole dirty deal. If you want to watch the victim-blaming video, it’s below (though you might have to scroll further down this page for it until my theme gets fixed this summer).