Lost in a Good Book

I’m not sure how much I have mentioned it on the blog over the years but I have been a massive fan of the National Novel Writing Month for many years. After being introduced to in back at university I have been an active and enthusiastic participant since 2008 and I have looked forward to November every year since as I take the chance to write.

In that time I have finished very few novels but I always hit the 50k mark. I have written stories that were easy, some that were like pulling teeth and every ten, hundred, thousand words was torturous. I have written stories that I based off songs, based off a dream, based off playing The Sims. I’ve tried my hand at fantasy, historical, short stories, contemporary, and romance. I have 50 thousand plus words written for each of these ideas and so many more that I think of fondly. Of these numerous stories I have even developed three of them into actual edited, structured, novels. I have thought about them for years, tinkered, fiddled with, restructured and pondered over some for more than a decade as the idea wouldn’t leave me. Nano is incredibly important to me. So much so I associate warm weather with writing and often get my most writing done on warm sunny days. I think I associate it with sitting in front of my computer each November writing every single day for hours on end.

But all of that is changing. The announcement came in my inbox at 9am on 1 April via email that Nano was coming to an end. I had to check the current time in the USA to determine if it was a poor taste joke or whether the US hadn’t entered April yet. Alas, it was not a joke. As a non-profit organisation NaNoWriMo relies on donations in part, each year they are involved with the P4A project and you can donate through their website and have been able to for many years. However it seems that isn’t enough as the Nano team cited financial issues as the cause of their closure.

There have been are a lot of factors in the past as well, I know they had a major issue with their forums and moderation which resulted in an overhaul of how the site worked and the forums ran, but even then it kept going. The sad thing is, even if there has been a slump in finances, many believe the final nail in the coffin was their support of the use of AI in writing which resulted in obvious backlash. In the video they released it adds a bit more confusion on the exact reasons for the final closure. Those more knowledgeable than I can look at their graphs and finances, but you can also read between the lines and work out what it all means and what their reasons really are. At the moment I’m happy to sit on the sidelines and just be sad and annoyed about the whole thing.

It’s not new that Nano has been different in the past few years. The change of the website and forum set up felt different to the numerous years spent chatting in topic forums about specialist hobbies for a character, or sharing titles, sharing character names, going into the genre specific areas to share fantasy ideas and concepts. The shout outs for hitting 1k, 5k, 40k were always fun to revisit and see how far ahead or behind you were with other people and your month’s projections, not to mention the “coffee shop” forums where you could escape writing for a while and chat about other things. I still have an entire bulging folder (as bulging as an online folder can be) of the Nano encouragement emails that used to come out from various famous authors over the years. Those little reminders to keep going were wonderful and often had a lot of inspiration and advice as well. They felt less common than they used to be too.

Participating in Nano wasn’t confined to the website. You could talk to people online and share stories and encouragement without ever opening up the website or a forum. A hashtag on any social platform and a conversation could give you a writing buddy across the world. People all over were talking about and making things connected to Nano, it was a great community. I fell in love with Nanotoons which was started by Debbie Ridpath Ohi and continued by Errol Elumir. I came in with Errol’s run and it made me wish for a write-in near me I could join and become immersed in the fun and games of community writing. I loved getting the emails each year and loved following the characters on their writing journey alongside my own.

Even with all the changes there’s no denying how impactful Nano can be on a writer. Nano famously was the place many novels were started. There’s articles and lists, a Goodreads category, even a bookshop section for books that were written during Nano. It’s wonderful to see that the pain and panic of trying to write 50k in a month (an “easy” 1667 words per day) can accomplish something great.

Lifetime word count

In my time participating I started 17 books, and I have continued to work on 3 of them. Which isn’t a huge percentage but it doesn’t mean the others are forgotten either. I have so many memories on this blog, as well as other places like Facebook, Tumblr, and even Twitter back in the day of sharing my goals, my achievements, and my frustrations and elations that it will be strange not to have an official website to work with.

It does feel like, even though they were years apart, the writing traditions and community I have enjoyed since I started using Nano in 2008 are gone. My beloved WriteorDie, a staple for many Nanoers, after numerous changes and updates finally shutdown entirely. A quiet and surprising end to something so integral to my writing experiences. NaNotoons ended in 2018 which was a shining light in my inbox each November, and now Nano itself is gone.

Of course no one can stop you writing a novel in November, but there was a comfort in a website, having a goal, the new badges that came in recently to add some fun and challenges and retrospection on writing styles. Not to mention chatting with others who were just as keen, just as frustrated, just as stuck and creative as you were. I could have written this post about the memories of my projects, the challenges each one had, the fun I had finding a new inspirational quote each year, and competing against buddies and their writing stats. How I would write summaries for books I hadn’t written yet, design covers, and would vary between having a full story and no title or a title and no story. I could talk about the winners certificates I was so proud of, the winner goodies, and the banners I spread across the socials. How I got writing software I still use and how I saved all my stats to look back on my achievements each year. But then I could be writing forever.

As a worldwide community event that started in 1999, NaNoWriMo recently celebrated its 25^th anniversary. It has brought people together in write-ins, across the globe and in local communities as people found support, buddy systems, encouragement and ideas sharing and it is a shame it won’t survive long enough to even see out the 2025 event.

I don’t know where we will all end up but hopefully there will be a migration somewhere else where we can continue to build on the writing community that we’ve grown to love over the decades. If there’s one thing I’ve noticed is the writing community will always find one another and the writing will persevere.