NaNoWriMo Is Imploding Due To Woke Activists In-Fighting Over AI Use

The National Novel Writing Month became a bloated organization catering to the worst elements in the publishing industry, but artificial intelligence may have killed it.

NaNoWriMo is an organization that started to give writers focus during November every year, but in recent years, it has become a politicized institution with a lot of drama involved. Now, the woke activists they courted are revolting because the organization won’t condemn AI use for writers. 

NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. The organization surrounding it created a website and a sense of community for writers who wanted an extra push to attain their writing goals. The idea is simple: during the month of November each year, the challenge is to write 50,000 words on a project—do something novel-length to complete your book.

The website has a tracker, community forums, and other productivity tools to help writers. Unfortunately, the site became mired in leftist identity politics in recent years, veering from its mission to try to appeal to the woke mob in publishing.

In 2022, a whistleblower inside the organization came forward to us to expose what was going on with the organization. The whistleblower said, “I’ve been one of their remote volunteers for almost a decade as an ML for my local area and enjoyed it. A few weeks ago, HQ sent out an email about some new policies that they will be implementing starting for this year’s cycle. One of them requires that all volunteers must go through CRT/Woke/DEI training of some sort (either one that they provided or from their companies) and then send them a letter about how they will implement the training to their region. I haven’t fully looked into it yet, but I’m assuming this will require turning all of our spaces into “safe spaces” and all of the Woke/SJW whatever. Right now, my area is a chill space and we don’t focus on labels and identities and call out culture, but I’m afraid that if I don’t turn it into one of those types of spaces, I’ll be removed from my spot.”

The person also reported NaNoWriMo having “BIPOC Zoom meetings” to discriminate against white authors. It makes sense as NaNoWriMo is headed out of one of the craziest leftist communities in Berkeley, CA. 

NaNoWriMo has also had a problem with child predators as was reported by the X account, @Arumi_Kai, “Last year, the nonprofit #NaNoWriMo ignored reports about one of their mods funneling teen minors from their site to an ABDL fetish site, only banning the mod 6 months later when the users who uncovered the issue got frustrated & went public.”

The account also revealed more of their bad practices, “Hey, so remember how #NaNoWriMo had issues with transparency that ended with alleged child predators infiltrating their org? And it only came out because users found out? Their new draft ML contract BANS any volunteer from revealing ANY internal info to users.”

“The *only reason* anyone found out about the alleged abuse and exploitation of minors (both on the main site and their teen site) was because users collaborated with internal info. They're trying to make sure that no one can try to hold them accountable ever again,” they continued.

These allegations weren’t enough to sink the organization. It came later as now novelists are disavowing NaNoWriMo not because of child predators, but because of a statement made allowing AI use. 

They posted to their website: NaNoWriMo neither explicitly supports nor condemns any approach to writing, including the use of tools that  leverage AI. We recognize that harm has been done to the writing and creative communities at the hands of bad actors in the generative AI space, and that the ethical questions and risks posed by some aspects of this technology are real. The fact that AI is a large, complex technology category (which encompasses both non-generative and generative AI, applied in a range of ways to a range of uses) contributes to our belief that AI is simply too big and too varied to categorically support or condemn.

NaNoWriMo's mission is to "provide the structure, community, and encouragement to help people use their voices, achieve creative goals, and build new worlds—on and off the page." We fulfill our mission by supporting the humans doing the writing. Please see this related post that speaks to our overall position on nondiscrimination with respect to approaches to creativity, writer's resources, and personal choice.

We made mistakes in our initial expression of this position. We speak to those mistakes in this letter to our community, and we've simplified the language on this page to reflect our core position.

This non-stance on the matters was enough to send the woke into a tizzy fit. They feel threatened by artificial intelligence because they know their talent level is below the inconsistent drivel AI writing spits out.

NaNoWriMo responded by alleging enough harassment involved that it was worth writing a second statement:

In early August, debates about AI on our social media channels became vitriolic. It was clear that the intimidation and harassment we witnessed were causing harm within our community of writers. The FAQs we crafted last week were written to curtail those behaviors. We wanted to send a clear signal that NaNoWriMo spaces would not be used to bully or delegitimize other writers. This was consistent with our May 2024 statement, which named a lack of civility in NaNoWriMo spaces as a longstanding concern.

Taking a position of neutrality was not an abandonment of writers’ legitimate concerns about AI. It was an acknowledgment that NaNoWriMo can’t maintain a civil, inclusive community if we allow selective intolerance. We absolutely believe that AI must be discussed and that its ethical use must be advocated-for. What we don’t believe is that NaNoWriMo belongs at the forefront of that conversation. That debate should continue to thrive within the greater writing community as technologies continue to evolve.

We apologize that our original message was unclear and seemingly random. Our note on ableism and classism was rooted in the desire to point out that, for people in certain circumstances, some forms of AI can be life-changing. We certainly don’t believe those with concerns about AI to be classist or ableist. Not being more careful about our wording was a bad decision on our part.

Our Mission is about providing encouragement to writers and cheering them on as they progress toward their goals. That remains our primary focus. In the future, we will be more transparent about the issues that we are trying to address with any messaging we provide.

Finally, we recognize that some members of our community have other questions and concerns that go beyond general context for our comments. We don’t think we can address all of these in a single communication. Additional context here is that we are a very small team (including our Interim Executive Director, who is a volunteer). We want to take the time to read through your letters with the care, attention, and concern they deserve. Please expect more in the coming weeks.

Even this is not enough for the woke Inquisition, which continues to boycott NaNoWriMo despite it being an organization that did its best to appeal to extreme leftists. Woke activists Daniel José Older and Maureen Johnson stepped down from their board, and Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Erin Morgenstern also spoke out against it. 

The situation has led to complete disarray within the NaNoWriMo community. It was even reported on File 770, “Just to let you know what’s been happening with NaNoWriMo since they refused to ban AI: someone I know very well, Morgan Hazlewood, replied when I asked her about her “November writing project”, replied, “there is a reason I am calling it my November project. Pretty much every group I know has disassociated from the parent group, but the people who found each other through the project are sticking together. And most of us are still doing our own challenges.”

While child predators are totally fine by the left for an organization, AI use seems to be a line too far.

What do you think about NaNoWriMo falling apart? Leave a comment and let us know.

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