This is the summer that I decided nothing would stop me from getting a new novel draft saved on the external hard drive. I have a great idea. I’ve accumulated lots of material. The perfect title even came to me.
Then, I went to NaNoWriMo’s website to prepare for Camp NaNo, and the website was dead.
No, it’s still live; you can update your account with a new project. It’s just dead—nobody is there talking about their latest projects. Very few people have been there since November 2023.
So, I started looking around for why the National Novel Writing Month website is a ghost of itself. After NaNoWriMo last fall, everyone who volunteered or worked for the organization quit or was sacked. The forums are there, but no one is posting or replying.
Finally, Twitter got my answer. There were tons of tweets about why people quit NaNoWriMo.
There was a grooming incident involving minors. The only way anyone found out about it was because they used the website last November to write a draft. Since then, NaNoWriMo has been tight-lipped, and the only way to find out what happened was to find other writers who participated in the annual event. Now I know why no one is there. NaNoWriMo is dead for many writers. Starting today, NaNoWriMo is dead to me, too.
I’m still going to work on my novel draft. I waited until today for Camp NaNo to begin, but I know how this works, and I have the tools without NaNoWriMo. I even found some tweets offering other websites that provide the same tools and none of the bullshit.
NaNoWriMo is dead to me.