It was quietly announced last week that the organisation behind National Novel Writing Month was to close. Universally known as NaNoWriMo, or even NaNo, this was a challenge to draft a 50,000-word novel during November each year, later expanding to include smaller challenges in other months.
The announcement, made on Sunday 31 March, was so quiet that only those on the mailing list received it. There also exists a corresponding video from the Interim Executive Director, which has not gone down well with the commenters.
And yet, at the time of writing, the official website remains unchanged. So when I heard the news second-hand on April Fool’s Day, I had to double-check it, missing the chance to include the news as last week’s entry. Still, the week-long gap has allowed some time for reflection.
I joined NaNo in 2010. It had been around for 11 years at that point, and was arguably at the height of its popularity, as illustrated by Google search trends over the years. There were dozens of affiliate groups around the world, including one in Dundee city centre. At my very first meeting, my laptop ran out of battery, so I rushed out to buy a notepad and a mechanical pencil. The graphite rods kept breaking, rendering it next to useless.
Fast-forward five years, and I’d graduated from member to organiser in the natural flow of people leaving and joining. I stayed in that role for nine years alongside several different co-leads until we withdrew our affiliation in 2024 over the nonsense that had been happening.
By this time, I’d fallen out of love with the central November challenge, as I found myself with an increasing series of started but incomplete novels. I didn’t fall out of love with bringing writers together, so I’m pleased still to be co-leading the independent group we created to replace it.
So the big question: what caused the closure? It’s a complex story that can best be told by the NaNo Scandal website, which has documented the problems with the organisation from December 2022.
However, the simplest analogy is that of a Fortune 500 company, which will typically act to keep its stakeholders satisfied. In the case of NaNo, the stakeholders were the organisers on the ground who encouraged members to keep writing and to keep donating. After alienating these folks, the cash dried up.
Speaking of cash, search information from the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) website makes for interesting reading. From what I can gather, the nonprofit National Novel Writing Month should be filing Form 900 annually, which then becomes a matter of public record. However, the last document at the time of writing dates from 2021.
I’m absolutely no expert, so perhaps there’s a genuine reason why the last four years are missing from this list. But if you’re an accountant or you’re connected with the IRS, you can access the search function and enter the Employer Identification Number 65-1282653 to find out the details.
I really don’t want to leave this entry on a sour note. I was involved with the organisation in some capacity for 14 years, so more than half of its 26-year history. I had some wonderful experiences, and I still speak to so many former participants. So here are three memories that stand out:
- I held a couple of midnight launch parties at my home, with the plan to start writing in the first hour of 1st November. I had only a two-seater couch at the time, so every chair and cushion was taken up with people, who were also dodging electrical extension cables. As the clock hit 12am, the entire room fell silent for an hour, aside from the tapping of keys.
- I’d met someone in real life and was chatting to her via Facebook Messenger. I wanted to take a gamble and ask her out, so I enlisted the members of that week’s NaNo meeting for advice, all of whom were in long-term relationships themselves. They helped me to steer the conversation and figure out what to say next. She still turned me down.
- A local organiser used to be known as a Municipal Liaison or an ML. As the pandemic was easing, the government was permitting people to meet up again, while NaNo was still warning MLs to hold only online meetings. To circumvent this, I told the group I would be in our usual venue at a certain time, and there were spare seats if anyone happened to be passing, but that this was not a meet-up. I even wore a sticker reading NOT ML, which became an in-joke for a long time afterwards.
Gavin Cameron 