A not-so-brief history of National Novel Writing Month from its beginnings in 1999, its growth as a nonprofit, its scandals, and where November Novel-writers can go from here,

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It's that time of year again. You may love it, hate it, fear it, or be totally uninterested. I'm talking about...well, what you're calling it now depends on your history with it and your feelings on the way things went down. It used to be National Novel Writing Month, aka., NaNoWriMo, and in some cases it still is. Some are calling it Novel November. Others seem to be not calling it anything and just *describing* what it is.

For the sake of ease, I'll be calling it NaNoWriMo (or NaNo for short) during the full duration of its existence as a nonprofit.

This is a rabbit hole. I set out to write something about commodifying creativity and the problems of centralizing movements under capitalism. But it ended up being so much more than that.

I'm going to do my best to sum everything up according to my understanding of what happened based on the graveyard of evidence from shut-down forums.

Sound Credits

• Jester Dance by Conquest | https://freetouse.com/music/conquest  
• Meditation Music by Dana Music from Pixabay
• Typing Sound Effect by DRAGON-STUDIO from Pixabay

• "State of NaNoWriMo" closing announcement
• Thread for NaNo Alternatives, Writing Discords & Resources
• TrackBear
• Ellipsus Preptober Templates
• NaNo 2.0
• Ellipsus's sponsorship retraction
• Daniel José Older's resignation post
• National Novel Writing Month: Inside the A.I. controversy tearing a writing community apart.
• What is NaNoWriMo's position on Artificial Intelligence (AI)? – National Novel Writing Month
• SPEAK OUT
• NaNoWriMo 2023-2025 controversy summary
• NaNoWriMo Moderator accused of child exploitation
• Spam, Spam, Spam Spam: Inkitt and the Grand Novel Contest - Writer Beware
• 2024 Volunteer Agreement - Final Revision.pdf - Google Drive
• Reddit Thread: "Discords, forums and a decade’s worth of allegations" - Part One
• Reddit Thread: "Discords, forums and a decade’s worth of allegations" - Part 2
• The Tragic Downfall of NaNoWriMo | Deep Dive - Savy Writes Books
• The Fall Continues
• Fall of the House of NaNoWriMo?
• Interview with Chris Baty
• History told from NaNo's POV, on Archive.org