Image: MPClemens
Over the next several years, my participation waxed and waned, but I finally reached my first official 50,000-word success in 2017. (I had previously won with a self-defined goal a couple of times.) By that time I’d become a semi-active member of NaNoLanta, and I still have a small stuffed panda in my writing area with a collar that says “Writing is My Superpower.” I won again in 2018, but by then some other parts of my life were changing and I was becoming far less involved with NaNoLanta. I participated in 2019 and 2020, but I did not win.
And then came 2021.
In March of that year, NaNoWriMo released an organizational racial equity strategy that included, among many other things, extra pay for BIPOC employees (for no other reason besides their race) and an explicit racial quota for hiring interns and staff members, as well as for volunteer recruitment. Further, they released diversity, equity, and inclusion goals that only singled out race as a determining factor (except for a single goal involving Title 1 schools).
Don’t misunderstand; I support DEI initiatives when they’re actually about increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion. That means consideration of additional factors along with race, such as (but not limited to) ethnicity, sex, socioeconomic level, religion, and disability status. Further, an earlier version of the document stated their intent not to hire any white candidates as interns or staff during the next twelve months.
That’s no more inclusive than a refusal to hire BIPOC candidates. Further, I would posit that it’s a bit of an insult to them, since quotas imply they can’t compete on an equal footing with white candidates. The only way that could possibly be true would be if they were using a non-merit based hiring system to begin with.
It got worse. In May of that year, NaNoWriMo posted a controversial statement to social media where it referred to Palestinian territories as “occupied,” but since the statement itself was about their writers in Israel and Palestine, that was still slightly within their scope. Not so in June, when they announced political positions that had nothing to do with the identity of its writers. They repeated these actions in the following months, expressing opinions on political issues ranging from wealth inequality to identity politics to abortion and life issues. They also began making donations to political organizations.
I agreed with some of their political positions and disagreed with others. I still do. But I strenuously object to donating to a supposed 501(c)(3) organization that uses those donations to make political contributions of any kind, except as concerns issues related strictly to that organization. As an example, I adored their laptops-in-schools program and agreed that Title 1 schools should receive a greater benefit. But I saw no relevance to their core mission when it came to advocacy of organizations working against abortion bans or to improve voting rights; and I definitely didn’t want my donations allocated to political causes, regardless of whether I agreed with them.
If I want to materially support a political cause, I’ll do it directly.
That was when I discontinued donating to NaNoWriMo, and I limited my involvement in it to online-only. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of the problems.
In 2022, there was controversy surrounding scammers in their online forums, including at least one incident where they actively partnered with a scam company.
In 2023, it wasn’t scammers. It was child groomers. NaNoWriMo’s response was to shut down their forums completely. Given that the forums were the only way to find out about local events, this effectively meant an end to the community aspects of the program. The move was widely — and, in my opinion, correctly — seen as unnecessarily draconian. Much larger organizations are able to run forums while establishing and enforcing safety guidelines. But the NaNoWriMo Board’s anemic response clearly showed they weren’t open to suggestions.
Earlier this year, it came out that they hadn’t even been taking basic steps such as identity verifications and background checks. With today’s technology and capabilities, that is simply inexcusable, to the point of being wildly unethical. It’s also nowhere near legally compliant, because the whole reason for the legal guidelines is because it is known that scammers and groomers are ubiquitous on the Internet.
In recent days, a new controversy has arisen: NaNoWriMo has come out with non-opposition of artificial intelligence, and when they were called out on this stance, they doubled down with a statement that a “categorical condemnation” of artificial intelligence is “classist and ableist.”
After the events of 2021, I don’t believe NaNoWriMo has even the slightest nuance when it comes to their understanding of either issue. Further, their statement failed to distinguish between assistive artificial intelligence and generative artificial intelligence. The former is an enormous help to disabled individuals. The latter doesn’t make any difference at all, and the largest platforms are known for their unethical practices when it comes to content used to “train” their models.
Again, don’t misunderstand: I don’t categorically condemn artificial intelligence either. In fact, I don’t even categorically condemn generative AI. I sometimes use ChatGPT to answer quick research questions so that I can stay in the “flow” of my writing. But if I’m going to need detailed information on a topic, I don’t stop after that, any more than I would stop after using only Google or Wikipedia. All of these are great places to to find sources, but they’ve never even intended to be primary or secondary sources themselves — and knowledgeable writers don’t use them that way.
But to broadly dismiss condemnation as “classist and ableist” takes it too far, and ignores the fact that unscrupulous actors have already used generative AI to create fraudulent content. I first became aware of this situation in the context of “bound” fan fiction products, which all-too-often are based on scraping of fan fiction sites without the authors’ permission (or even knowledge), even though it endangers those same authors. But it’s not limited to fan fiction; just recently I came across an article about a fraudster being arrested after allegedly making millions using automated streaming of songs created with generative AI. Not to mention that it has been practically impossible to live in the United States post-2016 without hearing about fake news or deepfake creations.
There’s a lot for writers to be upset about when it comes to generative artificial intelligence, and NaNoWriMo’s position is diametrically opposed to that of the writing community at large. It also clearly shows that the organization has become completely out of touch with its core audience, and blithely dismissing their concerns with inappropriately applied “weasel words” shows that they have no intention — or, likely, even interest — in rectifying that.
I had hoped to simply sit NaNoWriMo out for a few years until it got through its growing pains. But after all these controversies, it’s become clear that it is no longer an organization that I can support, even with qualifications. I’m still going to use November as a time to focus on growing my word count, but from here on out, I’m strictly doing it informally. I will no longer be involved in, or even associated with, National Novel Writing Month or its successors.