Trigger warning: This article discusses child grooming. Please exercise personal care while reading.
Well, writers, it’s the end of an era: NaNoWriMo is closing its doors for good.
In an email sent out to community members on March 31, the writing nonprofit announced that it was shutting down operations “after six years of struggling to sustain itself financially.” Included in the email was a video from interim executive director Kilby Blades entitled “The State of NaNoWriMo: A Community Update.” The video provides an in-depth explanation of the various operational challenges that had plagued NaNoWriMo for years, ultimately leading to its closure.
What Is NaNoWriMo?
NaNoWriMo, short for National Novel Writing Month, was created in 1999 by Chris Baty. Originally organized with 21 participants, NaNoWriMo became a nonprofit in 2006 and has since grown into a substantial international writing community. In 2022, over 400,000 writers across 671 regional chapters participated in the nonprofit’s various programs and community challenges.
The titular challenge, NaNoWriMo, took place every November. In order to successfully complete it, participants must write 50,000 words of a novel within the month. Many popular books have emerged from NaNoWriMo, including The Night Circus, Water for Elephants, Fangirl, Cinder, With the Fire on High, Anna and the French Kiss, and An Absolutely Remarkable Thing.
In addition to the main challenge, the organization also hosted Camp NaNoWriMo in April and July. Camp NaNoWriMo allowed writers greater flexibility in the word count goals they could set and the projects they could work on. Additionally, NaNoWriMo ran a Young Writers’ Program for children and teen writers as well as K-12 educators. The NaNoWriMo website provided numerous resources to help writers kickstart projects, track their word counts, and reach their goals.
Why Is It Shutting Down?
Blades’s video outlined the numerous ongoing financial and organizational issues the nonprofit had experienced in recent years. She noted that NaNoWriMo had “operated at a book deficit for four of the past six years,” taking out a COVID-19 relief loan in 2020. Like many arts nonprofits, the organization had faced difficulty securing funding, with the majority of its budget coming from merch sales and sponsorships.
The organization had also been criticized for its handling of several 2023 incidents involving the user NaNoWriMo forums. This included allegations of child endangerment and grooming against a NaNoWriMo forum moderator, as well as separate accusations of misconduct and incompetence against other moderators. The ensuing investigation resulted in NaNoWriMo closing their online forums in December 2024.
In her video statement, Blades also cited additional concerns about the organization’s inability to monitor unofficial community spaces, such as Discord servers and Facebook groups with no NaNoWriMo staff presence.
Recent years have seen NaNoWriMo rocked by scandal, from the aforementioned allegations against moderators to the organization’s controversial remarks on AI. Blades denied AI’s role in NaNoWriMo’s closure, calling the shutdown “a logical outcome of longstanding circumstances, not a salacious tale of scandal that can be blamed on child endangerment accusations or AI.” She also said that “[n]umerous AI players approached [the organization] with offers of sponsorship” but were turned down because “they didn’t align [with NaNo’s] mission.”
What Happens Next?
Response to the news of NaNoWriMo’s impending shutdown has been mixed. Though many writers have lost trust in the organization over the years, others mourn the community they found through participating. As the website prepares to go dark, its users seek alternative methods of tracking their writing progress as well as alternative community spaces.
While NaNoWriMo leaves behind a complicated, fraught legacy, at one time, it brought thousands of writers together to tell their stories and cheer each other on. Though the organization may be entering its final chapter, the many writing communities that sprouted from it will surely live on.
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