NaNoWriMo Shuts Down Their Website Giving Authors No Warning Their Data Would Be Disappearing

The NaNoWriMo website shut down completely, being taken offline as writers on Reddit voicet their anger that their data disappeared without warning.

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.

It doesn’t appear like it’s a lot to maintain, but with woke activists taking it over in recent years, the organization became bloated with too big of a structure, and in-fighting eventually led to its complete collapse.

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.

A lot of the drop off in support, though, came last year not because of the child grooming allegations nor because of a simple decline in participation. Authors across the industry threw a fit about the NaNoWriMo AI policy, which allowed the use of AI for its all-volunteer system because they wanted to allow disabled people to participate. This was not addressed in the NaNoWriMo video.

Last year, NaNoWriMo made a statement 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.

From here, authors and fans went outraged on social media about artificial intelligence, claiming NaNoWriMo were anti-author and doing everything they could to sink the organization. During this stage, it’s when many volunteers and moderators quit the organization, leaving NaNoWriMo gutted in the process. With all of the other problems, this is where the dominos began to topple as per Kilby’s video.

Leftist writers and volunteers revolted against NaNoWriMo over this statement, AI panicking people in establishment writing communities more than anything else. Even SFWA and the Horror Writers Association have come out with finger-wagging statements about AI to try to stem the inevitable tide.

The result was a gutted NaNoWriMo in 2024 with a barely functioning forum, very few videos or articles of encouragement for writers last year, and a barely functioning tracker. Their web forum had been shut down, and the organization turned down any people who attempted to volunteer.

Their social media presence was sparse as well, with only a few posts that appeared to be generated by a sponsor who was propping up NaNoWriMo while they restructured. Their X account has no posts since November 2024, which shows a distinct lack of working on anything in the meantime to maintain the brand.

In April, they’ve sent out an email alerting people as to their pending shutdown:

To Our NaNoWriMo Community,

We come to you today with sad news. After six years of struggling to sustain itself financially, NaNoWriMo (the nonprofit) will begin the process of shutting down.

Explaining how we got here is both simple and complex. The funding woes that have threatened so many nonprofits in recent years are an unextraordinary trend. Many beloved organizations announced their closure last year. Many more are fighting for their lives. Media coverage of financial crisis within the sector—especially among nonprofits—has been widespread.

Yet, there are ways in which NaNoWriMo is extraordinary—and the reasons we had hoped we could buck that trend. The sheer size of our community, its global reach and its longevity, held at impressive levels, even during a tumultuous year. There is no shortage of writers who want to participate in NaNoWriMo. Yet, building a community and being able to sustain it are two different matters. 2024 was a revelatory year.

In order to fully understand how we reached this decision, and why we view it as the only alternative, we encourage you to watch this video about the State of NaNoWriMo. The video also contains some important acknowledgments and information about the logistics of our next steps. Most importantly, the video shares real data and information that the organization has not discussed previously. The plot is thicker than you might think.

Now, the website has officially been shut down and taken offline without warning. It was first noticed on the NanoWriMo subreddit, where authors voiced dissatisfaction with another lack of communication from the organization, as everyone who was on their has their data evaporated without warning.

A user posted:

What a freaking waste. A huge, passionate and vibrant community founded on conquering the impossible, brought down by gross mismanagement and a refusal to listen to the community that gave it life.

I’ve been sad about this for a long time, but it’s definitely hitting home today, especially seeing the posts from people freaking out about losing their site data, since NaNoWriMo NEVER officially announced the shutdown on official channels to warn them.

We meant nothing to them, even in the end. Good riddance.

Dozens of authors followed voicing feelings of betrayal and disdain for the leadership of this organization that once inspired so many writers.

What do you think of NaNoWriMo shutting down their website with no warning? Leave a comment and let us know.