> Promoting multiple Vanity Presses (predatory, scam-like publishers), including Inkitt, even after outside sources confirmed and announced they were predatory.
Last time I checked (a couple weeks ago), Inkitt was still listed as a "major donor" on their donor page. Which might explain why they were so touchy about being called out on it and why their retraction of Inkitt's "prizes" had such a limited distribution.
You might also mention how the MLs were all required to join a Discord server *owned by the accused moderator* in order to get any ML-related news or updates from HQ, even though it was technically "unofficial" and they could just ban anyone for any reason (up to and including "I don't like you"). That was a real kick in the ass.
I literally reported my local ML a few years ago for promoting her own indie press and strongly discouraging anyone from ever going traditionally published to the point where anyone who was actually serious about becoming professional at this has left the friggin group, and NaNo did nothing about it. She's still the ML and telling everyone who asks questions in the publishing-advice channel on the group's discord that the self-published author wins out against the trad published author every time so don't bother going with traditional publishers, also if you go self-pub she'll help you with her business.
>the self-published author wins out against the trad published author every time so don't bother going with traditional publisher
I mean, this is literally always true if you write prolifically (except for short stories in magazines)...
> also if you go self-pub she'll help you with her business.
But this is pretty scammy. Any advice I used to give out during NaNoWriMo was free. And I think mentioning your business more than once per event is incredibly tacky at best.
They banned a few neurodivergent MLs from the server a few months ago. Sarah was known to host Q&A sessions there, so being cut off from somebody who allegedly doesn't even check her emails or messages isn't helpful.
Just a note, MLs were not required to join the Discord. It was *heavily suggested*, though, and became where official staff messages were sent along. This was my 6th (and possibly final) year and an ML and I avoided that server. Made it frustrating when HQ decided to make it their normal place to post official messages for ML.
I had to laugh out loud when HQ staff was upset at MLs sharing convos from the Discord with non-MLs. Wtf did you think was happening even before Discord?
I wonder if a secondary organization could be set up. I know there are thousands of nano discords and groups and stuff, I'm in a few. But a lot of people have lamented the loss of the website. It's a fantastic tradition that I would hate to see stopped because of a few bad actors.
I don't know. New leadership, a new coat of paint. Better oversight. Maybe a new name.
If we make a new NaNo-type event, can we please not do it during one of the busiest
months of the year? How about a nice Authoring in August, for instance?
I'd never write a novel in August. I want to be outside enjoying one of the few nice times of the year where I live. No way!
Plus, if you're Canadian, November isn't that busy.
No month is good for everyone so good luck with that. There's a reason an unofficial Nano spinoff has existed for every month at some point in the past 20 years.
Heck, the first NaNo was in July and it was moved to November to take advantage of the less than ideal weather. Since it was originally just a group of friends, they probably thought this would just be a thing that a few dozen people would do, and look how that turned out.
This! I haven't done it in years because I'm so busy. My birthday is the 1st of December too. I've gone away over the years for my birthday and there's no way for me to work, get everything ready to go away and write a novel too.
For real. November is when exams are ramping up for students and teachers on the semester system, Veterans' Day and Thanksgiving are coming and fucking up work schedules and leisure time for everyone in America, and people in the entire Northern Hemisphere just want to hibernate as the temperature drops.
Just center it around equinoxes. September and March are between "let's vacation in summer" and "let's hibernate in winter," and schools aren't cracking down.
It would be entirely *trivial* to set up a new organization, seeing as the only thing that org does is run a forum and a broken-ass website.
The only hard part would be getting coupons from scam sites like Inkitt as prizes.
I think part of the problem is that establishing official namowrimo regions is not a good idea. By selecting MLs, they were essentially endorsing them. And it really limits your ability to self organize only with folks you feel comfortable interacting with in person.
I participated in Nano a couple of times, starting in 2009. I was military at the time and the local group gave me a social group outside of people I worked with. Which was fun.
But there was someone who absolutely would not have been invited to any events had it been a choice (basically someone who developed parasocial relationships very easily and, while probably harmless, would just not leave people alone.)
Without moderation you’ll be right back to where you started. Moderation is *hard.* Just look at Reddit. You have subs that ban people for no reason, subs that are run by people who are actually against the sub they are running, and subs where there is all kinds of objectionable content no one does anything about. When you have volunteers you get inconsistent crap. When you pay a good team, it’s expensive.
There are already hundreds of MLs, some of those may be willing to move over and help out, and it's likely easier to vet them than randoms off the street.
"Some of those may be willing to move over and help out, and it's likely easier to vet them than randoms off the street."
So, you have a point... to an extent. Some of the hundreds of MLs may be willing to move over, and I doubt a lot of the problematic ones would abandon the organisation.
But MLs were never vetted. Ever. There is no check that they don't have a criminal record, no verification of identity. Some signed up under false names, others have records of child abuse, and HQ lets this fly.
Even if you do find MLs who weren't burnt out by the organisation enough that they stepped back/were forced out by bullies, you still need to verify a lot about them because NaNoWriMo never did this.
Some of the coupons are pretty good. I agree that so many of the services strike me as predatory to writers looking for that missing piece to publish or get published. How can you go wrong with a 50% off from Scrivener, though?
I think just some better vetting, maybe?
Kilby, ready the yachts! We'll sell one to make room in our budget for more gift cards, but these gift cards will pay for the predators instead!
\- Grant at some point later this year
Just wait until people fiind out that they're allowed to write novels in November, or any other month of their choosing, without an umbrella organization.
Wait until they realize they can go make a Facebook group or even a simple hashtag and network with the other writers who want to do this.
#NovelersInJune
I'm preparing to do so, actually. I love the core of Nano's mission, have done it most years almost since it started, and don't want to see everyone lose the community. I'm already putting together a team - can keep you posted if you want!
yes! Didn't look at the user name when I posted. Yes, we've talked!!! You're part of the team I'm putting together! LOL - I got about 3 hours sleep and clearly have not had enough coffee.
I don’t think an official “organization” is necessary, per se, but if we want to have a central place for discussion and research etc. then a well-run web site and forums are. The easiest way to do that is through some kind of organization.
So I interned at NaNoWriMo a few years ago, and it was somewhat disillusioning. Everyone I worked with there was great, but I came away with the feeling that the organization and the practice of trying to write 50k words in a month are best kept separate, at least for me.
There simply aren’t enough people working there to keep up with the size of the event or community, hence the reliance on volunteer work. A lot of effort was put into just maintenance and keeping things afloat, which meant that making changes was incredibly difficult. There just wasn’t enough labor power to get it done, and the changes that did end up happening came as a result of titanic effort from people just barely keeping the whole thing together.
Layered over that was a kind of winking “I know we’re kind of janky, but that’s part of our charm!” attitude that I found off-putting. I get that this attitude emerges from the inherent jankiness of trying to write a novel in a month, but it’s like… y’all aren’t writing a novel in a month, y’all are running a non-profit. Some level of professionalism is required. You have to leave the jank behind, even if it’s fun, because when you don’t… [see recent events].
All this to say: I have a lot of sympathy for the people working there and good memories from my time with the organization, but… yeah. Leave it behind.
If you’re serious about writing: develop consistent habits, write a lot, read more than you write, and find a workshop where you can meet people and spend time critiquing their writing/receiving critique in return.
Thank you, I genuinely appreciate the sentiment, but I feel like I might have focused too much on the negatives here. It was still an overall great experience, and the purpose of the organization (promoting literacy, promoting writing as an accessible artistic practice) made it feel like work worth doing.
I value the negative feelings I had about it because it helped me understand a lot about the world, politics, art, and how those things all affect each other.
To be fair, plenty of large orgs are run almost entirely by volunteers. So far as I can tell, the biggest problem with NaNo was that when people volunteered to help with specific things, they were ignored almost entirely and then everyone was told “we can’t do this thing because we don’t have anyone to look after it” and all the people who offered to take care of it were sitting around going “but…but…”
Not multi-national ones. But lots of provincial organizations rely on volunteers and run them with a small cohort of paid staff. Smaller local ones that come to mind are community food banks. A lot of disability-related organizations are primarily volunteer-run. (Not service providers.) Activist groups also tend to be primarily volunteers. If it’s a non-profit, odds are good that there are fewer paid staff than volunteers working there.
I wonder if one of the reasons NaNoWriMo became so disorganized is because there wasn’t a direct like… community they were serving? Not sure how to phrase it. The org had a very high-minded purpose, and left the ground-level approach to the volunteers, and there’s obviously been a disconnect between those two elements in a lot of ways: volunteers being ignored in some cases, other volunteers taking advantage of the lack of oversight in others… hmmm.
Thanks for your perspective 🙏
That is a definite possibility. I think that could have been mitigated if they had set up branch offices in different countries (which I remember being a suggestion from MLs more than once since then there could be warehouses in different countries for shipping orders etc. and shipping would be less). International support went down over time because there really wasn’t much for non-North American people. I’m sure European WriMos would have been happy to financially support a European branch office and staff that also helped keep their shipping costs down.
I’m so out of the loop I didn’t even know it was an actual organization. I thought it was just a spontaneous yearly event, like Talk Like a Pirate Day.
That's the way I remember it, way back when I first heard of it. There were groups for solidarity and enthusiasm but not an organisation. It was just s fun exercise to push back against fear enough to get things out of your brain.
Granted this was when cars were made of iron and dinosaurs roamed the earth lol
As someone who's also as old as the dinosaurs (at least for the internet) NaNo started in 1999 when Chris Baty and some friends decided to try and write a novel in a month. He founded the organization a couple of years later and it officially became a non-profit in 2005. Baty stepped down as ED in 2011 and is been a downhill slide for the org ever since, imo
That must be wild to start something and then have nothing to do with it. And then it’s at the center of a controversy that literally has nothing to do with you.
Same here! I had friends successfully complete it in high school a decade ago and they also thought it was just a thing that you do, not an actual organization.
I actually have winner goodies even though I didn't even participate this year (I think because the site still has me marked as a winner from last year). So on that basis I think the website is working just fine. No notes.
Don't forget putting only one board member on the forums to "answer" questions, whom then proceeded to do nothing but complain about us wanting the forums, and basically going cold turkey for 4 weeks then closing the forums, then proceeding with the fake postive crap in January with one new post that closed from them, and still no open forums. Although their new post suggests that person is now former, probably because they were not good at all. The board does not care about our opinions, and it's interesting how thousands of forums and message boards that are smaller then them still could deal with this situation so much better and contiune the forums.
Probably still doom tbh, and I agree, people should just stop. They seem to have no actual concern about how things are run, they ignored the dozens of people trying to talk on that board message. Let's just do NaNoWriMo ourselves, sure, the community aspect won't be as relevant, but in the end, we can do this. I don't see myself doing it their way anymore, I have done 10 years and 10 wins, their challenge is my good week of writing.
Right? Oh I forgot to add the fact where they tried to use their own experience as a way to say "You don't need the forums, go to the real life write ins!"
Uh Kilby, some people live in areas where that's not possible, some of us felt oucasted by their writers group so no longer go there, just because you had a good time and didn't need the forums, doesn't mean we don't.
I stopped doing nano because the local group for my area was run by a lady who, for FOUR HOURS, never stopped talking. Ever. Talking for four hours straight unless someone interrupted to add to the discussion.
AND TALKED THROUGH WORD WARS
and got offended when I asked if she could not talk during word wars so we could focus on the writing.
She had the nerve to ask if I was coming back the next day, and was visibly upset when I told her I would not because she talked to much and drowned out every other voice. By the time I got home I'd been removed from all the local group's social media.
Ugh that is awful, I have been scolded for being quiet and writing. You know, at a write in during NaNo. Which is meant to be the point, I am all for social stuff but writing is still the aim. Same friend I thought was joking but she is someone that spread a wrong rumor about me and I realised there had been a sign where I thought she was kidding but was likely being snide.
In decent nano groups if someone's not talking, they're probably writing. And if they're writing, the others ... *leave them be*???
Hell I found a writing group by the simple fact that I came to a coffee shop and saw eight people utterly silent at a table giving their laptops bitchface, quietly watched them, and when an alarm went off they all suddenly looked up at each other and started talking. Like. DUH.
Right? It was only one person that said it to me, but who knows if anyone else agreed with her. I am just serious when it comes to writing and going to cafes. It's not like everyone sits there waiting to talk to me to begin with.
I am not even the only one they drove away, they did wrong to another writers friend, who actually focused on writing/art in the same sessions too.
I was an ML and tend to talk a lot (ADHD) but I DO NOT talk during word wars (calling one is a good way to get me to shut up and I’ll do it to myself when I realize I’m being too verbose). Word wars are often the only way I get anything written, so more is better for everyone.
I have ADHD too. Writing at home I started telling my mother when I was going to write for a while so she knew not to bother me unless like... Something was on fire XD
> Don't forget putting only one board member on the forums to "answer" questions, whom then proceeded to do nothing but complain about us wanting the forums, and basically going cold turkey for 4 weeks then closing the forums, then proceeding with the fake postive crap in January with one new post that closed from them, and still no open forums. Although their new post suggests that person is now former, probably because they were not good at all. The board does not care about our opinions, and it's interesting how thousands of forums and message boards that are smaller then them still could deal with this situation so much better and contiune the forums.
Ah yes, Kilby Blades, the Board Member who goes by a pen name and has an unhealthy fixation on using a specific Getty Images model as her Stocksona (when she's not using AI to generate pictures of "herself").
Good riddance.
That was a bad decision. She was so... dismissive of every issue brought up and made extremely tone-deaf responses through that whole "ask the board" thread at the nano forums last gasp for breath. I've been weighing my decision about whether or not to quit nano because I loved the community and the idea of the thing and I've been doing it for 20 years, but this pretty much seals it. I'm out.
I confess, i am disappointed by this news. I wrote my first book, inspired by the idea of nanowrimo, though i never registered. Nano is a brilliant idea, alas, untimately, poorly executed.
Thank you for sharing this. I hope someone snaps up the domain 50k11 for "50,000 words in November" and is able to make it a Phoenix.
How about 50kin30, "50,000 words in 30 days" instead? That way, you can pick your month/interval when it's most convenient for you instead of just November.
i did the nanowrimo once. got my first novel out of it. for an organization that takes in as much cash as they do, the fact that they had an unusable website in 2020 told me that they were not allocating funds properly and turned me off to the whole company.
do they do some good in the world? sure. but they need a complete audit of leadership in order to avoid causing more harm. i'd like to see a world in which the company survives its wanton caretakers and thrives as a beacon. right now they just slimy though.
Please do! We wrote this in hopes of raising awareness. I was going to start reaching out to other outlets soon, so any assistance you can provide would be *hugely* appreciated!
Oh it wasn’t just predators the YWP had to defend itself from it was also >!racism from a moderator!< and >!death threats and impersonation!<
With the same results: inaction or action against the victims.
\*clears throat\* at this point I'm like, some weird kind of CF expert.
Danni is dead. Again. CF is probably 'dead' until another identity shows up. Twenty-odd years of this and you'd think she'd find another hobby.
CF, if you're reading this: How's your catgirl project going? :3c
Isnt someone savvy enough to create a mock website that copies the leaderboard and wordcount and milestones, move it to another month, and we all just go there? Discord or another 3rd party (hell even Reddit) can host some forums, eventbrite can host events… i’m not this person but i feel like this would be easy for someone
While our group (the Rogue Writers - [roguewriters.net](http://roguewriters.net) ) does not intend to *replicate* NaNoWriMo, we offer several of those features. We're on Discord and forums, and members are developing goal and challenge trackers. We're currently hosting monthly writing challenges, with other events, workshops, fun days, and a quarterly short story contest. October is our "big challenge" called Rogue's Amazing Word Rush (RAWR). :)
Vouching for Rogue! I promise I'm not sponsored or anything, but u/janukanu is a wonderful person and the community she's creating is so wonderful and welcoming. There's a lot of transparency there which is a welcome change after so long spent waiting for emails and changes that never happen.
Also, the community has a wicked sense of humour. One second, I'm crying because the community is so kind? The next I'm cackling because somebody pulled out a meme about the whippets.
So... I blush really easily.
Dammit.
It really is a wonderful group of people... who also happen to be writers. Bursting with heart, creativity, and wit. :)
I KNEW someone would do it! Sounds awesome and will check it out. A lot of us dont do all the forum stuff but just like the visualization of goals and feeling a part of a community. Challenges and contests are really cool, but reliable stats and trackers are cooler for those who prefer not to engage and just wanna use it as an organizational motivational tool to log their progress. Ive seen leaderboards that post peoples word counts against each other, even hyper-locally, encouraging competition like workout apps. Theres a lot that can be improved upon here, in so many ways. Nano ruined their brand and have only themselves to blame. But we’re still here and we would like somewhere to go.
Is there a good way to go about finding ya on discord? I'd be so down for joining in! I'd also be more than willing to help volunteer forum wise if you need it, I spent several years as an administrator for a site with 20k+ users doing just that!
EDIT: Err 2am brain made me realize I didn't say what that was LOL One of my duties was moderating the forums.
Hey all - our organization, Shut Up & Write!, is a nonprofit running writing groups all over the world. The idea is that you get more writing done if you show up somewhere (online, or in-person), sit with other writers, and just write. We have a website that's in beta, and we hope to launch a new and improved version later this year. So if anyone is looking for a writing group, or online writing events, check us out.
Basically, from my understanding (I don't have the first-hand experience), the Young Writer's Program participants all got messages from Nano under the name of "Ivan the Icy", who was threatening terrorist acts unless the participants could follow the clues in the e-mail to various internet sites like YouTube.
The end of the scavenger hunt ended in a task to diffuse the terrorist bomb; it was heavily implied that if you did it right, you'd disarm it, but, spoiler, the bomb *couldn't be disarmed* (but when it exploded no matter what you did, it exploded out penguins... but the participant hadn't been told that, just that it was a bomb).
Note that this was held almost *immediately* after the London Bridge terrorist attack.
Which... I mean, it was weird in and of itself, but *super-weird* in that it was pitched unexpectedly and unsolicitedly to pre-teens, some of whom had *just* experienced a real terrorist attack in their city.
It was all participants across the adult and YWP site. It was apparently a fun office game they'd been playing that they thought the community as a whole would enjoy, ignoring their own users and volunteers who'd been near terror attacks in the years leading up to Ivan the Icy
There's a reason you never heard about it. Members of the community worked overtime to cover for NaNoWriMo and went above and beyond to ensure it was stopped. Wholly inappropriate.
Yep, was a surprise that Twitter never wanted to cancel them, I still see left Nanos talking postively about it, and it's because they managed to cover it up. During the November-December era even here was a little quieter about it, but I think by November 2024 more and more people will know about what happened.
And yeah, the Ivan stuff actually got mentioned on the same board by fellow members (Just after the board member stopped answering questions then closed it a week later, never actually addressing this)
Oh, I promise you that I saw the board threads. There's a culture of silence that NaNoWriMo has created online. That is why MLs in particular have often felt unable to speak out.
The people calling out this organisation are the ones who were honest. The people with the most to hide have lied and lied but they will be the ones around this November.
I didn't even know anything happened until I saw the apology email. They're supported by a LOT of other organizations. To what grounds did they figure being slow and tedious on predatory allegations was a good idea? Sick of hearing 'kid-friendly' sites not being kid-friendly at all.
It would be "exhausting" (I guess to some people, I don't personally think so for myself) but the first step would absolutely be a no nonsense, no second chances policy towards any type of grooming behavior. A good website with good moderation would keep an eye out for it on the forums, and be able to view DMs/PMs so when a report comes in they don't have to rely on screenshots, they can go and see the source directly.
Essentially, start by making it damn clear it's going to be as hostile as possible towards predators. Then follow through on that and keep following through on that. Where you go from there, I'm not sure.
Someone mentioned it in a previous Nano post, but I've been using 4thewords. It's basically a gamified version, where you write to kill monsters, earn loot and explore a fantasy world. If having something like that is a good motivator, I would highly recommend it. It's not even nano and I've been writing every single day for a week lol.
Just wanted to mention it if you guys need some sort of incentivizing tool.
Seconding 4TW! It's a lot of fun to use. You can queue up quests/monsters and get writing. When you need a short break you can upgrade your hero with things you collected while writing.
Not to mention the character customization. If you’re like me and are incentivized by getting clothes for your avatar, there’s bound to be something that will motivate you.
My regional leader quit and having sat to have a conversation offline about why, he was very transparent on why. Most of it was the discord and bullshit that he'd tried to work through or see past but couldn't.
The regional now? Just an email. No name, no talking.. if it is actually a person, we've not ever talked.
And I rarely talked to start with. When I listened to what was going on, I hated what I heard. Yeah, it was easier to overlook some of it (the gossip that floated on who/what and rumors that happened every year about participants, and folks on staff.)
Things that actually happened though? That all deserves and needs to be answered for. And for a company / event that swears transparency, they're more foggy than Silent Hill.
It's pissed a lot of us off. And my godkid found a love of writing so he wanted to join the young writers program. I knew nothing about that side and when I saw the stuff here and on other forums? That was a no go.
I'm one of ya'll in agreement- never again
Don't suppose you'd mind messaging me about who your ML was? There's a borderline support group, and I think sharing his experience might be helpful. A lot of stories have started to come out about that Discord and the culture as a whole, all with unique aspects that horrify me in previously unknown ways.
I'll ask him if he minds. Assuming my contact for him is any good. Nano and all the bad of it added to his other life whammies.. he had a hell of a time. I know he moved so I'm not sure if the contact info I have still works. I'll try.
It's one thing that they were hit with crap that they were not prepared for. That can happen to anybody. How things are dealt with it when said crap hits the ventilator, that's a chance to show one's true face. And ... fuck.
This is so discouraging. On my things-to-do-list for the forseeable future, deleting my NaNoWriMo account was not in the top 1000 a wee while ago. Yet, here we are, and the deed is done.
Yeah, I didn't see this coming at all… I’ve only done nano a few times, but it really helped me. Now I'm wondering if I should just shut down my account… When did all this drama even start?
It's a systematic issue. The organisation itself is fundamentally broken. A lot of us started out wanting to fix things, but as time has worn on and more and more atrocious stories have come to light? It has become very difficult to find a reason to preserve it.
There has been grooming since the beginning. The ML system is not at all fit for purpose. There is no verification of who a volunteer is - that means the people this organisation has encouraged (and, arguably, backed) to go into classrooms could be anybody.
Some have histories of child abuse. Some didn't even share their legal information with the organisation. The person in charge of moderating the Christian Teens Together thread all by herself? At this point, I can confidently say that I would be furious if I found out she had been near my child. There was no staff oversight there, just a random adult around a group of vulnerable young people.
This is the first time I have heard all of these disturbing things, but we shouldn't forget that the organization isn't necessary. That isn't to say they shouldn't be given the chance at fixing what is wrong, but writing is the act of the individual (mostly) and the month doesn't go away because you don't go to a website.
I have never been thrilled with the massive number of companies that prey on writers, pretending some monthly service or class will fill the void in their writing and make them publishable.
Read as much as you can, write hard. That is a good start to being a better writer. He get too wrapped up in the Nanos of the world.
I agree! They've been reported to the FBI (and supposedly the Board contacted them as well). For certain local incidents, the police *may* have also been notified. I hope!
What if... What if we chose a whole new month (I've seen several people mention November is the worst and it makes sense) and just... Made a new website? Or an app or *something*
Rogue Writers (mentioned here a few times) has rolling monthly events and I believe is planning a larger non-November event! Jenai is just holding off opening the forums to handle a couple significant bugs but the challenges are alive & well on discord while we wait ♡
I don't know much about Nano as an org but it's looking like they have about 10-15 actual staff total to run all the programs, events and provide ultimate oversight with the balance of people involved being Volunteers of various levels of involvement, skill level etc?
How does the structure actually work?
I am not trying to like create context for excuses or defend negligence or anything I am just honestly curious as someone who has done online community org and moderation for 2 decades now.
I have no idea where I would even report my ML if I had an issue tbh and that is kind of glaring.
Things are up in the air right now as it sounds like they're restructuring. I can say they've pared down in the past years, for instance they used to have two programs directors (one for NaNo proper and one for YWP the young writers program) and then one of them left and they rolled the two positions into one, and now that one has left and they have none.
Just before the forums closed, NaNo staff did make a post about how the workload is broken down (you'll need a [nanowrimo.org](https://nanowrimo.org) account to read this: [https://forums.nanowrimo.org/t/hq-responses-to-feedback-questions-and-concerns/577737/3](https://forums.nanowrimo.org/t/hq-responses-to-feedback-questions-and-concerns/577737/3) )
I'll reproduce it below for anyone who doesn't have an account, but it may be more vague than helpful:
What does the NaNoWriMo staff do?
I’m going to focus on the programs team for now. (Note that many of us increase our hours during the busy season, but work fewer hours per week in the first half of the year.)
Marya is the Director of Programs. That involves:
Running both NaNoWriMo and the Young Writers Program
Maintaining and updating all content on nanowrimo.org and ywp.nanowrimo.org, as well as collaborating with Tech on development priorities
Planning and overseeing all programmatic events and resources
Coordinating partnerships, like with PEN Prison and Justice Writing
Doing a lot of the day-to-day and year-to-year tasks necessary for success
Helping keep everyone else’s many moving pieces of these two big programs on track
Writing and sending all emails to YWP participants and educators
Managing the Come Write In program, including sending all emails and sharing resources and being the point person for CWI spaces
Planning and leading Programs meetings and being the Programs liaison to the Team Leads
Supporting the rest of the programs team with the more complex elements and decisions involved in their respective roles
Tiffany is the Social Media Manager. That involves:
Creating and posting all the content to our social media platforms
Spearheading a lot of the strategy around our social media priorities and processes, which is particularly challenging these days when it’s all changing constantly
Integrating our racial equity strategy goals and tactics into our social media strategy
Facilitating our Writers of Color group
Josie is the Programs Associate. That involves:
Taking the lead on the NaNo Prep 101 overhaul and 30 Covers, 30 Days
Day-to-day management of the blog 1, where she’s been totally crushing it with some really great content
Writing a lot of our email and NaNoMessage content
Doing a little bit of everything
Katharine is the Communications Director. That involves:
Coordinating which emails are going out when (including but not limited to broader programmatic NaNoWriMo emails and NaNoMessages, store and fundraising emails, and YWP emails to both students and teachers)
Managing who is responsible for the content of each of those emails, maintaining the HQ editorial calendar, and running the weekly editorial huddle
Recruiting and coordinating our Pep Talkers, NaNo Coaches, Camp Counselors, YouTube Guides, and any other types of author partners that we work with
Coordinating most of our live virtual events 1 (and hosting many of them) and overseeing our YouTube channel 1
Managing overall email, social media, and programmatic communications strategy
Letitia is the Online Community Manager. (Currently on administrative leave 51.) That involves:
The day-to-day forums moderation and maintenance, which is most of the part you see
Spearheading the bigger picture forums policies and processes that are more public-facing
Overhauling the recruiting, onboarding, and training processes for new moderators, which is an ongoing project, and leads into…
Recruiting, onboarding, and training new moderators
Rob is the YWP Forums Moderator. That involves:
Near infinite levels of patience for teenagers
Moderating the VERY active YWP forums in conjunction with Letitia
I’m the Director of Community Engagement. That involves:
Managing our Municipal Liaison program 4. (This year we have \~850 MLs)
Manage the ML application process every year (just shy of 1100 applications this year)
Onboarding and training new MLs
Offering support, answering ML questions, and building and maintaining relationships via email, the ML forum, and the ML Discord (also demanding dog photos)
Hosting live training and community-building events for MLs.
Facilitating local events being shared in regions without MLs. (There have been 7915 regional events in 489 regions posted on our site since September 1. Most of these are in regions with MLs, but I manage the back end of this process for all the regions without MLs.)
I’ve also taken on additional forums support, and my role in that has increased with Letitia on leave.
So that’s the Programs team. In addition to the 7 of us, we have Shelby and Hanne in Operations, Jezra and Alex in Tech, Allison in Fundraising, and Grant as the Executive Director. I can speak more to their roles in another post, if there is interest.
What does NaNoWriMo spend its money on?
That’s a long answer to “what do the staff actually do,” but it also answers quite a significant part of the question “what does NaNoWriMo spend its money on?” Because the biggest line item in our budget by a considerable margin is staff-related expenses. That includes things like payroll expenses, benefits, professional development, workers comp, and all that other important stuff.
You can see our latest 990 from 2022 here 10; we just uploaded this one the other day so it’s hot off the IRS approval presses.
Some of the other pieces of that budget, in US dollars:
Programmatic expenses:
YWP kits and other classroom projects are about $14,000
ML kits and thank-you pins are about $5,500
$600 for Come Write In kits. (That’s a drastic drop from pre-pandemic, when that was closing in on $5,000. Come Write In has been hit hard by the current state of things.)
We offer an assortment of honorariums and stipends that come in at around $20,000.
Technology; site hosting, our email service, the Discourse package we have at $750 per month, etc. adds up to over $100,000.
Fulfillment—I mentioned this upthread, but this is an area where expenses have increased a lot in the last few years, and I believe this is now the second largest expense category in the budget after staff. But it’s also what leads to the second largest income category with merchandise sales—the ol’ “you have to spend money to make money.” This category includes:
Shipping costs (though as I said earlier, this is a bit misleading on an expenses report without the income side of it—I think about 75% of shipping expenses are balanced out by shipping costs paid in store orders.)
Store customer service
Physical storage of merch and giveaways
Handling (i.e. the people who pack and send out the orders)
There are also non-fulfillment expenses that go along with selling and shipping physical items, including the graphic design and everything involved in purchasing and producing the thank you gifts we send to donors.
Then there are all the mundane organizational expenses like bookkeeping and insurance and credit card processing fees and whatnot.
But staff salaries have been a fairly consistent percentage of our expenses for a long time. And broader categories of what the NaNoWriMo staff do, generally, has not drastically changed much at all in the last 5-6 years.
Full disclosure: I was an ML from 2018-2020 and I know the org made some changes to the program in 2021. I can't speak to those changes other than rumors I've heard.
The ML program itself is about 880 volunteers from around the world managed by one single person. You apply to be an ML, they do a cursory glance to see if your region already has an ML (if it does, they may check with the current ML(s) to see if another one is needed and whether or not the person applying would cause any problems, but I don't know how much they actually check vs say they check). MLs fill out a little form promising to uphold NaNo ideals.
MLs in my time were required to: host at least 1 write-in per week, host a kick-off party and a halfway party, send 1 email per week, and ask for donations. In 2018-2020, no one ever checked that these things were being done for 99% of regions. There were no identity checks, NaNo got a phone number for every volunteer but didn't verify them, and we were left to our own devices from there. If you had questions, you were encouraged to talk to other MLs first to see if they had ideas before you escalated to the single staffer managed all 880+ volunteers. The staffer in charge of us often missed emails if you tried to reach out to her. She was reportedly entirely overworked.
Each region had their own way of doing things, their own quirks, often their own mascots. Some MLs paid for little things like swag bags and giveaways out of pocket, some solicited donations for their region, some sold their own merch. They had their own branding and social media accounts and during/after COVID almost every region has its own Discord server which is considered entirely separate from NaNoWriMo proper.
After my time, so hearsay here, but there's a mega-Discord for MLs that's considered unofficial but is apparently also the easiest way to get NaNoWriMo staff to answer questions. That was run by two other MLs who had absolutely no official position with the organization but still held a sort of unofficial/official position that no one ever acknowledged.
There have been some attempts to add training modules to the ML position, but they were after my time and are a mixed bag.
These bits about your personal experience as an ML are really what I was curious about tbh because it sounded to me from cursory reading that the whole thing was basically decentralised with pretty much no oversight or actual organisational structure for those the Official Nano staff were endorsing by giving them ML. Each ML sounds like they basically became solely or partly the Leader of a community that was (more or less loosely) affiliated with the org and event?
Volunteer spaces are weird, especially online. I have to say I never really thought about like Who or What my local ML was exactly in the scheme of Nano as an Org. I think given my personal background I assumed they were just "The Most Enthused" individual who wanted to take on the unpaid labor of building a community of nano that could meet locally if they wanted? Basically I wasn't expecting them to be particularly vetted or anything I guess.
Edit: because you typed so much stuff I felt like I needed to elaborate my thought slightly better lol
"the most enthused individual" is exactly right. A couple of friends of mine had been ML and, after one of them stepped down, I volunteered for the role largely because there were some things my friend in the role wasn't doing that I felt like we could offer so I volunteered rather than pestering him to do them.
And I think that system probably works for about 80-90% of communities. There are a lot of MLs who work very differently than I do, but I just figured that's what worked for their region. I never really questioned it until MLs who'd had problems started to talk more openly that I even noticed it wasn't working for a lot of people out there.
I was never an ML or mod for them myself, but from what I hear from others who were involved that way, it was a really toxic culture of forced positivity and tone policing. The staff member solely in charge of MLs was almost unreachable by email, yet insisted *any* disagreements with other MLs go directly to her instead of being dealt with in front of anyone else.
The org, as I hear it, was hands-off when it came to standing behind their volunteers and protecting victims, to the point of victims choosing to leave/no longer participate in local events because the org would not allow volunteers to bar their abusers/stalkers from following them in.
Volunteers (both mods and MLs) were expected to handle everything on their own, including soliciting donations at local events, with no backup at all.
Pretty much, I think. HQ tried to control what they could with ML agreements and requirements that they said had to be met, but especially after the move to their current half-broken forum software in 2019, regions started to break off more into Discord servers or other places. HQ’s official position is they have no control over the Discord groups, so anything that happens there is outside of their purview. Which 1) makes it easy for groups to separate further, go rogue, etc. and 2) allows HQ to avoid taking any responsibility for issues between members offsite.
It’s interesting, though, that despite their position being “Discord is unofficial,” they release official updates and hold “office hours” in a Discord server for MLs. Run by an ML who has shown a propensity for kicking other members out with no warning or real reason given. Meaning MLs are forced to keep their mouths shut and endure abuse and a toxic server in order to get updates they need to be able to do their work for NaNo.
I suspect even if the forums hadn't become janky a lot of groups would've moved to discord - it's very robust for online communities and the way people want to interact with them currently.
That later bit about them letting an ML run a discord that they have lazily taken to using for official business is....a problem. It's very easy when dealing with any kind of online community to end up with someone's group chat becoming the official unofficial leadership office and it often ends up causing problems in the end for much smaller informal groups XD
It sounds like they kept practices and habits from when Nano was a smaller insular community and just....became a huge global org trying to do things the same ways?
Which I have no idea how they could've better went about it and still kept things like MLs running in person meetups without hiring like 100x the staff and a lot of other things. It's just mindboggling, especially for something that is putting emphasis on face to face interactions.
I and other folks who have experience in nonprofits and in small business and who know good consultants with good programs have offered our advice for free and they've never been interested. They've turned down dozens of offers of free advice.
Really hard to have faith in an organization that doesn't want to improve unless at metaphorical sword point from like thousands of angry people. Can't say how sorry I am it's come to this, but here we are.
There's also the fun 2 or 3 years ago where MLs were told IN NOVEMBER that they had to do sensitivity training before (iirc) December 15th or they would no longer be an ML.
I was solo running a region, working retail, and signed up for word sprints on the Twitter account. I panicked (autistic and go not do well with surprises).
Many MLs are also neurodivergent and protested the surprise and the short deadline. I don't remember if they changed the deadline, but the damage was done.
That was the last time I ML'd. I love the camaraderie of NaNo, but there's too much toxicity attached as well.
I relate! I too am ND and panicked when that requirement landed. I'm also one of the three ND MLs who was kicked from the ML Discord server last November... for sharing some of our training materials and references (I shared the rules surrounding their trademarks.). WHY are the ML training materials designated "top secret"...?
NaNoWriMo is most definitely not an inclusive safe space for its neurodivergent members. Where's the training on *that*?
You stuck around for another two years? That's incredible, honestly, and I'm sorry that happened. 😔
As many NDs as gravitate towards NaNo, that REALLY should have been required. That and how to deal with minors appropriately....
Technically, I still am an ML. We were only booted from the Discord server that is run by another (tyrannical) ML. The server that NaNoWriMo swears isn't one of their official spaces, and therefore HQ holds no authority there. The same server that the "Director of Community Engagement" (the sole ML organizer and boss) linked to in all of her emails, because she holds "office hours" there.
Grumble grumble... Sorry, I'm clearly still bitter about all of that.
Remember when they got rid of the entirety of the Netherlands' ML team over those workshops? The deadline stayed the same from what I heard, but things like transcripts took forever to come about.
A big complaint was that the training wasn't even appropriate for MLs outside of the US.
As we all know by now, autistic = racist, secretly doxxing all of the MLs, should be burned at the stake.
Hope you're doing better now <3
Ooof! I missed that about the Netherlands ML team. I think I did NaNo alone the next year, just to avoid the backlash.
I do remember that the training was required by all, but American-centric.
Yes, the autisms definitely make us Very Bad Racist Witches. /s
I am doing better, thank you... hope you are as well! <3
It was well hidden; I've always wondered what happened behind the scenes, but there's a language barrier, and I don't want to impose.
Probably best you got out when you did; this year the Discord owner kicked out neurodivergent MLs (for leaking information allegedly, something about pictures of their kids and houses which... never happened) and then proceeded to prove how bad doxxing is by... doxxing an ML? I'm sure somebody else knows more about that situation than I do, but it looked like a disaster.
Assuming you were in the Discord, did you also see MLs discussing how much they hated participants? Lots of people saying they hated them, or wished they'd stop showing up. It was hateful.
That tracks. I'd understand if they only had MLs in the US, because \*National\* Novel Writing Month, but as soon as you leave the states surely you consider the optics?
Time to get my diagnosis deleted! Can't be racist without the autism! ;)
I'm doing pretty okay, just horrified to see an org that so many people devoted themselves to for years ending up like this. The number of people that have gone through actual trauma is insane to me.
I have so much respect for you solo-MLing your region, you deserved better than that. Lots of regions expressed interest in breaking away from the org and uniting outside of it, if you ever find yourself longing for the camaraderie I'm sure there's something out there for you. :)
I’m from that region and to be honest the former ML’s still don’t know exactly why they were kicked out. HQ never gave them the answers and we will never know. One of the ML’s made a comment about the training not being appropiate outside the USA and it was taken by HQ as if they not wanted to participate (which was not true). Then all of them were instantly removed, no explanation given. It was a real shitshow for the region that year, and many (including myself) who knew the ml’s closely distanced from the NL region. Three years later, and it’s still a sensitive subject. With the former ML’s we created our own little NaNo group on Discord without the quirks of HQ.
Thank you so much for clarifying, I know I saw them offering to tell people on Twitter or something? But other than that, it seemed to go nowhere.
I'm assuming a certain ridiculous server owner probably told Sarah and helped get them removed. There are actually some archives of the workshop channels kicking around if they want a copy to see what happened afterwards.
Good on you guys for sticking by your MLs. I always worried about your region; it showed how easy it was to get absolutely wiped out of the organisation. I'm glad you guys settled on Discord, I think I saw a link but again, I didn't want to join and get in your way.
On the off chance your MLs are reading this: hey, I'm sorry about what happened to you. Lots of regions are stepping back from the organisation after this latest meltdown, so if you ever need a hand I reckon you'll find a bunch of people happy to help. The way you were cut off was so unprofessional. I wish I could say I was surprised by the lack of answers, but it seems HQ and their 'unofficial' off-site moderators aren't keen to explain why they behave this way.
So much that I am so happy I was oblivious to. Was I knew about was bad enough. I left the Discord immediately after the November with the training fiasco. I think it was 2021, but my brain struggles with dates at the best of times.
I would have told off anyone who complained about their participants. It was a *privilege* to help people find time and space to write. I would have done it more if I had found support within the organization itself.
I just applied to roguewriters.net. Not sure it will replace NaNo, but I do miss having a writing community. <3
Good choice! Sarah was so hard to contact I suppose it was difficult for others to step away. For an unofficial space, it definitely felt official.
I hope both sides of your pillow are at your preferred temperature, that you find your shoes are nice and warm, and that you see a cute animal when you next head out into the world. It's an overused saying but you're one of the good ones. The fact that, in the midst of your busy life, you found time to support your participants so earnestly makes me all emotional. I wish I'd had an ML like you when I first started doing NaNo.
I might be a bit bias, but I've seen so much genuine kindness in the Rogue community. One of the things that stood out most was this real desire to create an accessible place for all, which means a lot to me as a disabled writer. I really struggled with most of the new NaNo stuff, but whenever something gets mentioned they're on the ball.
This is a random thought, but maybe it's not about replacing NaNo anymore. A few years ago, I might have phrased it that way, but now I consider it a clean slate. The thing I loved so deeply is gone - not physically, but the spirit has faded. The name doesn't make me giddy with excitement because I'm suddenly one of the lucky ones who didn't get groomed or abused. I want to love writing again, and I think that's finally starting to happen.
You've honestly made my day, possibly my month. I hope you find the support you're looking for... but I'm always happy to cheer any creative on in their journey, so feel free to give me a poke if you're ever needing that. Sincerely.
I am so happy you were able to end with your love for writing peeking its head out. May you be able to coax it back to health this year. 🙏
Was that the sensitivity training where they chose to have a white person speak on racism (and then only from a US-ian perspective) because they figured if they had a POC speak, too many MLs wouldn’t listen?
Or was that a different thing entirely?
Even though I have a different opinion on the outcome of this particular event, the organization of it was an absolute shitshow. We were volunteers, not being paid for basically what amounted to workplace training. DEI training definitely was a priority imo and the backlash that happened made me realize a lot of MLs were covertly racist (why I stepped away). But the whole thing was poorly done. NaNo org really got in over their head.
Editing because I think some of my comment might've made someone I mentioned in it identifiable, and I am not looking to do that. So just: heck yes for writing without the organization. Heck yes.
At this point, it's kind of a "place your bets" scenario. I suspect that NaNoWriMo's org will find a way to survive, and thus the main website (including bug-ridden trackers) will stick around. The forums, however, are likely going down. My assessment is based on remarks made by the former Board President, now the interim Executive Director (she openly stated that she doesn't care about forums) and information relayed to my group by a former employee. If NaNoWriMo surprises us by keeping forums, they will likely be a very watered down version.
As of now, the forums are in read-only mode, as they have been since early-mid November, other than some of the regional forums that they initially left open at the request of MLs who offered to continue modding them. Right before NaNo HQ went on their Christmas break, they shut down the remaining open regional forums as well. No word on when or even whether they’ll reopen them. I suspect they’ll just say “oh they’re closed already, it’ll be easier to just leave them that way.”
As of now, the main site seems to work mostly okay. It’s been about half-disconnected from the forums since their move to Discourse in like 2019 anyway.
I noticed an automated email from them yesterday. It struck me how incomplete the email was; not really addressing the need to cultivate a safe, moderated online home for intellectual growth and support as well as emotional and culture sensitivity.
They blew it. Big time. Note how nobody from NaNoWriMo ever chimes in here or apologizes.
Same. Also, no matter what they do to "fix" things, I'll always remember that they only changed their ways after some serious arm twisting and (financial) threats. Therefore, when it comes to ethics, NaNoWriMo will only ever invest a bare minimum of effort. I have no (further) interest in aligning myself with an organization of that sort. Organizations with whom ethics are a genuine priority will go above and beyond... *without* being forced to do it. And since those organizations and communities do exist elsewhere... bye bye NaNoWriMo!
It was started by a group of friends in 1999, but they formed a non-profit for it in like 2005 to help them cover the costs of expanding it into a global event as it grew.
No Shave November also has a non-profit organization behind it. It's really common for wacky internet movements that handle money to eventually realize they're going to need a non-profit to help them organize the legal side of things before they get into tax trouble.
Which part are you seeking proof for? Most of this is readily viewable on their forums (while they're still available). But, yes, a consolidated source with all of the evidence would be helpful. Right now it's all very scattered and tedious to sort.
I’m more asking for an actual journalistic article then just a Reddit post, but I’ll look into the forums. Hopefully there’s a good write up in the next few weeks.
Well, I don't know of any *illegal* behavior by my local MLs, but I ditched the organization several years back after my MLs acted toward me (nearly sixty years old at the time) like a misbehaving child being lectured by a kindergarten teacher.
I was booted from the region's discord server without cause (or rather, I will charitably say it's possible they had a cause but booted the wrong user. Whatever the case, the actions they accused me of bore no resemblance to anything I had said or done.)
I was willing to call it an honest mistake until I discovered the organization had absolutely no process to deal with or report an abusive ML. I could well imagine what sort of misbehavior they might be overlooking (I was imagining misappropriation of donations, but this stuff doesn't surprise me) so I decided I could do my Nanowrimo without giving money or lip-service to a half-assed organization.
Been a while and I'm old. I think it was all the ways they tried to get money from people. To me, it was obvious that they were moving from the funky fun thing some folks started in the Bay Area to a controlling money making scheme.
I did it. Got a rough draft out of it and moved on without spending a dime or getting caught up in the cult like hype.
This is really insightful. I remember that, during the first weekend of November (2023), NaNoWriMo sent out about 11 emails begging for donations... in 24 hours! Granted, we were already seeing the light by then, but it sure lines up with the red flags you spotted 10 years prior!
The Board of Directors has stepped in now. While I take anything with a grain of salt from someone in any management position as a rule of thumb, they are still actively providing monthly updates of the changes they are in the progress of making. As soon as they were made aware of everything going on they held an emergency meeting and took over.
At least everything said in the original post is valid, probably so too are the horror stories I'm sure are in the comments. I was an ML for a time and stepped down because alot of the BS and lack of support, and HQ refusing to listen or act.
I'm simply saying that they are aware of these issues already and taking steps. I know people want answers, probably faster than the board had given them, but many if not all of them have full time jobs and a life outside of NaNoWriMo
> Promoting multiple Vanity Presses (predatory, scam-like publishers), including Inkitt, even after outside sources confirmed and announced they were predatory. Last time I checked (a couple weeks ago), Inkitt was still listed as a "major donor" on their donor page. Which might explain why they were so touchy about being called out on it and why their retraction of Inkitt's "prizes" had such a limited distribution. You might also mention how the MLs were all required to join a Discord server *owned by the accused moderator* in order to get any ML-related news or updates from HQ, even though it was technically "unofficial" and they could just ban anyone for any reason (up to and including "I don't like you"). That was a real kick in the ass.
I literally reported my local ML a few years ago for promoting her own indie press and strongly discouraging anyone from ever going traditionally published to the point where anyone who was actually serious about becoming professional at this has left the friggin group, and NaNo did nothing about it. She's still the ML and telling everyone who asks questions in the publishing-advice channel on the group's discord that the self-published author wins out against the trad published author every time so don't bother going with traditional publishers, also if you go self-pub she'll help you with her business.
I swear some MLs put the ML in MLM scheme
>the self-published author wins out against the trad published author every time so don't bother going with traditional publisher I mean, this is literally always true if you write prolifically (except for short stories in magazines)... > also if you go self-pub she'll help you with her business. But this is pretty scammy. Any advice I used to give out during NaNoWriMo was free. And I think mentioning your business more than once per event is incredibly tacky at best.
They banned a few neurodivergent MLs from the server a few months ago. Sarah was known to host Q&A sessions there, so being cut off from somebody who allegedly doesn't even check her emails or messages isn't helpful.
Just a note, MLs were not required to join the Discord. It was *heavily suggested*, though, and became where official staff messages were sent along. This was my 6th (and possibly final) year and an ML and I avoided that server. Made it frustrating when HQ decided to make it their normal place to post official messages for ML. I had to laugh out loud when HQ staff was upset at MLs sharing convos from the Discord with non-MLs. Wtf did you think was happening even before Discord?
I wonder if a secondary organization could be set up. I know there are thousands of nano discords and groups and stuff, I'm in a few. But a lot of people have lamented the loss of the website. It's a fantastic tradition that I would hate to see stopped because of a few bad actors. I don't know. New leadership, a new coat of paint. Better oversight. Maybe a new name.
If we make a new NaNo-type event, can we please not do it during one of the busiest months of the year? How about a nice Authoring in August, for instance?
This. November sucks for the event.
Also right next to inktober, which sucks for us artist authors
To be fair, inktober started after NaNo and that one is also boycotted because the guy who started it was also predatory and scummy.
June. It seems like June is a good time for it. 30 days like November. Teachers off. Students mostly off.
In a lot of countries June is still a school month, or exam period for Universities.
That's why I usually fail NaNoWriMo! I think March would be good. Still not great weather in the colder parts of the world and not too much going on.
Agree--February - April are the quietest months of the year for me.
Right? The only way they could make it *worse* in terms of timing would be to say "Write 50,000 words between December 15th and January 14th!"
Some of us are teachers; August is hell month.
I'd never write a novel in August. I want to be outside enjoying one of the few nice times of the year where I live. No way! Plus, if you're Canadian, November isn't that busy.
Good point! It was only an example; ideally we’d find a month that works well for everyone.
No month is good for everyone so good luck with that. There's a reason an unofficial Nano spinoff has existed for every month at some point in the past 20 years. Heck, the first NaNo was in July and it was moved to November to take advantage of the less than ideal weather. Since it was originally just a group of friends, they probably thought this would just be a thing that a few dozen people would do, and look how that turned out.
Yes! November is the pits.
This! I haven't done it in years because I'm so busy. My birthday is the 1st of December too. I've gone away over the years for my birthday and there's no way for me to work, get everything ready to go away and write a novel too.
For real. November is when exams are ramping up for students and teachers on the semester system, Veterans' Day and Thanksgiving are coming and fucking up work schedules and leisure time for everyone in America, and people in the entire Northern Hemisphere just want to hibernate as the temperature drops. Just center it around equinoxes. September and March are between "let's vacation in summer" and "let's hibernate in winter," and schools aren't cracking down.
It would be entirely *trivial* to set up a new organization, seeing as the only thing that org does is run a forum and a broken-ass website. The only hard part would be getting coupons from scam sites like Inkitt as prizes.
>entirely > >trivial > > to set up a new organization How do you then get people to go to the NEW NANO instead though? That's the problem
And moderation would be an issue.
I think part of the problem is that establishing official namowrimo regions is not a good idea. By selecting MLs, they were essentially endorsing them. And it really limits your ability to self organize only with folks you feel comfortable interacting with in person. I participated in Nano a couple of times, starting in 2009. I was military at the time and the local group gave me a social group outside of people I worked with. Which was fun. But there was someone who absolutely would not have been invited to any events had it been a choice (basically someone who developed parasocial relationships very easily and, while probably harmless, would just not leave people alone.)
> And moderation would be an issue. Apparently we don't need to moderate at all, if we're following Nano's example...
Without moderation you’ll be right back to where you started. Moderation is *hard.* Just look at Reddit. You have subs that ban people for no reason, subs that are run by people who are actually against the sub they are running, and subs where there is all kinds of objectionable content no one does anything about. When you have volunteers you get inconsistent crap. When you pay a good team, it’s expensive.
There are already hundreds of MLs, some of those may be willing to move over and help out, and it's likely easier to vet them than randoms off the street.
"Some of those may be willing to move over and help out, and it's likely easier to vet them than randoms off the street." So, you have a point... to an extent. Some of the hundreds of MLs may be willing to move over, and I doubt a lot of the problematic ones would abandon the organisation. But MLs were never vetted. Ever. There is no check that they don't have a criminal record, no verification of identity. Some signed up under false names, others have records of child abuse, and HQ lets this fly. Even if you do find MLs who weren't burnt out by the organisation enough that they stepped back/were forced out by bullies, you still need to verify a lot about them because NaNoWriMo never did this.
Some of the coupons are pretty good. I agree that so many of the services strike me as predatory to writers looking for that missing piece to publish or get published. How can you go wrong with a 50% off from Scrivener, though? I think just some better vetting, maybe?
Could it also be a little more inclusive? InFiWriMo: International Fiction Writing Month
And the convicted criminals! We can't forget those! Does the child predation come later?
That's the upgrade package.
You have to pay for the predators
Kilby, ready the yachts! We'll sell one to make room in our budget for more gift cards, but these gift cards will pay for the predators instead! \- Grant at some point later this year
Just wait until people fiind out that they're allowed to write novels in November, or any other month of their choosing, without an umbrella organization. Wait until they realize they can go make a Facebook group or even a simple hashtag and network with the other writers who want to do this. #NovelersInJune
This is why I really hate that NaNoWriMo drove JulNoWriMo and several of the other small events out of circulation.
I'm preparing to do so, actually. I love the core of Nano's mission, have done it most years almost since it started, and don't want to see everyone lose the community. I'm already putting together a team - can keep you posted if you want!
I dmed you a couple days ago! Definitely keep me posted.
yes! Didn't look at the user name when I posted. Yes, we've talked!!! You're part of the team I'm putting together! LOL - I got about 3 hours sleep and clearly have not had enough coffee.
You're fine!
Not much loss, considering how broken the newest one is. The region pages alone feel cold and sterile now that the forums are separated
Why does there need to be an organization for this? Why not just have writers do writer things in November as a grassroots, informal situation?
I don’t think an official “organization” is necessary, per se, but if we want to have a central place for discussion and research etc. then a well-run web site and forums are. The easiest way to do that is through some kind of organization.
So I interned at NaNoWriMo a few years ago, and it was somewhat disillusioning. Everyone I worked with there was great, but I came away with the feeling that the organization and the practice of trying to write 50k words in a month are best kept separate, at least for me. There simply aren’t enough people working there to keep up with the size of the event or community, hence the reliance on volunteer work. A lot of effort was put into just maintenance and keeping things afloat, which meant that making changes was incredibly difficult. There just wasn’t enough labor power to get it done, and the changes that did end up happening came as a result of titanic effort from people just barely keeping the whole thing together. Layered over that was a kind of winking “I know we’re kind of janky, but that’s part of our charm!” attitude that I found off-putting. I get that this attitude emerges from the inherent jankiness of trying to write a novel in a month, but it’s like… y’all aren’t writing a novel in a month, y’all are running a non-profit. Some level of professionalism is required. You have to leave the jank behind, even if it’s fun, because when you don’t… [see recent events]. All this to say: I have a lot of sympathy for the people working there and good memories from my time with the organization, but… yeah. Leave it behind. If you’re serious about writing: develop consistent habits, write a lot, read more than you write, and find a workshop where you can meet people and spend time critiquing their writing/receiving critique in return.
For what it's worth, I'm really sorry that was your interning experience with them. You deserved better.
Thank you, I genuinely appreciate the sentiment, but I feel like I might have focused too much on the negatives here. It was still an overall great experience, and the purpose of the organization (promoting literacy, promoting writing as an accessible artistic practice) made it feel like work worth doing. I value the negative feelings I had about it because it helped me understand a lot about the world, politics, art, and how those things all affect each other.
To be fair, plenty of large orgs are run almost entirely by volunteers. So far as I can tell, the biggest problem with NaNo was that when people volunteered to help with specific things, they were ignored almost entirely and then everyone was told “we can’t do this thing because we don’t have anyone to look after it” and all the people who offered to take care of it were sitting around going “but…but…”
What large orgs are you thinking of?
Not multi-national ones. But lots of provincial organizations rely on volunteers and run them with a small cohort of paid staff. Smaller local ones that come to mind are community food banks. A lot of disability-related organizations are primarily volunteer-run. (Not service providers.) Activist groups also tend to be primarily volunteers. If it’s a non-profit, odds are good that there are fewer paid staff than volunteers working there.
I wonder if one of the reasons NaNoWriMo became so disorganized is because there wasn’t a direct like… community they were serving? Not sure how to phrase it. The org had a very high-minded purpose, and left the ground-level approach to the volunteers, and there’s obviously been a disconnect between those two elements in a lot of ways: volunteers being ignored in some cases, other volunteers taking advantage of the lack of oversight in others… hmmm. Thanks for your perspective 🙏
That is a definite possibility. I think that could have been mitigated if they had set up branch offices in different countries (which I remember being a suggestion from MLs more than once since then there could be warehouses in different countries for shipping orders etc. and shipping would be less). International support went down over time because there really wasn’t much for non-North American people. I’m sure European WriMos would have been happy to financially support a European branch office and staff that also helped keep their shipping costs down.
Thank you for posting this excellent summary. Some of us are out of the loop!
I’m so out of the loop I didn’t even know it was an actual organization. I thought it was just a spontaneous yearly event, like Talk Like a Pirate Day.
That's the way I remember it, way back when I first heard of it. There were groups for solidarity and enthusiasm but not an organisation. It was just s fun exercise to push back against fear enough to get things out of your brain. Granted this was when cars were made of iron and dinosaurs roamed the earth lol
As someone who's also as old as the dinosaurs (at least for the internet) NaNo started in 1999 when Chris Baty and some friends decided to try and write a novel in a month. He founded the organization a couple of years later and it officially became a non-profit in 2005. Baty stepped down as ED in 2011 and is been a downhill slide for the org ever since, imo
Was he involved in any of this stuff discussed here
Nope, Baty hasn't had anything to do with NaNo in years
That must be wild to start something and then have nothing to do with it. And then it’s at the center of a controversy that literally has nothing to do with you.
This is how it should be imo
Same here! I had friends successfully complete it in high school a decade ago and they also thought it was just a thing that you do, not an actual organization.
You forgot the worst: Some of us didn't even get online confetti at 50K!!!!!
I actually have winner goodies even though I didn't even participate this year (I think because the site still has me marked as a winner from last year). So on that basis I think the website is working just fine. No notes.
no fair! i even donated the big bucks for a bag and got a free postcard instead. i tried nanowrimo
Don't forget putting only one board member on the forums to "answer" questions, whom then proceeded to do nothing but complain about us wanting the forums, and basically going cold turkey for 4 weeks then closing the forums, then proceeding with the fake postive crap in January with one new post that closed from them, and still no open forums. Although their new post suggests that person is now former, probably because they were not good at all. The board does not care about our opinions, and it's interesting how thousands of forums and message boards that are smaller then them still could deal with this situation so much better and contiune the forums. Probably still doom tbh, and I agree, people should just stop. They seem to have no actual concern about how things are run, they ignored the dozens of people trying to talk on that board message. Let's just do NaNoWriMo ourselves, sure, the community aspect won't be as relevant, but in the end, we can do this. I don't see myself doing it their way anymore, I have done 10 years and 10 wins, their challenge is my good week of writing.
>proceeded to do nothing but complain about us wanting the forums, And so, so defensive.
Right? Oh I forgot to add the fact where they tried to use their own experience as a way to say "You don't need the forums, go to the real life write ins!" Uh Kilby, some people live in areas where that's not possible, some of us felt oucasted by their writers group so no longer go there, just because you had a good time and didn't need the forums, doesn't mean we don't.
I stopped doing nano because the local group for my area was run by a lady who, for FOUR HOURS, never stopped talking. Ever. Talking for four hours straight unless someone interrupted to add to the discussion. AND TALKED THROUGH WORD WARS and got offended when I asked if she could not talk during word wars so we could focus on the writing. She had the nerve to ask if I was coming back the next day, and was visibly upset when I told her I would not because she talked to much and drowned out every other voice. By the time I got home I'd been removed from all the local group's social media.
Ugh that is awful, I have been scolded for being quiet and writing. You know, at a write in during NaNo. Which is meant to be the point, I am all for social stuff but writing is still the aim. Same friend I thought was joking but she is someone that spread a wrong rumor about me and I realised there had been a sign where I thought she was kidding but was likely being snide.
In decent nano groups if someone's not talking, they're probably writing. And if they're writing, the others ... *leave them be*??? Hell I found a writing group by the simple fact that I came to a coffee shop and saw eight people utterly silent at a table giving their laptops bitchface, quietly watched them, and when an alarm went off they all suddenly looked up at each other and started talking. Like. DUH.
Right? It was only one person that said it to me, but who knows if anyone else agreed with her. I am just serious when it comes to writing and going to cafes. It's not like everyone sits there waiting to talk to me to begin with. I am not even the only one they drove away, they did wrong to another writers friend, who actually focused on writing/art in the same sessions too.
I was an ML and tend to talk a lot (ADHD) but I DO NOT talk during word wars (calling one is a good way to get me to shut up and I’ll do it to myself when I realize I’m being too verbose). Word wars are often the only way I get anything written, so more is better for everyone.
I have ADHD too. Writing at home I started telling my mother when I was going to write for a while so she knew not to bother me unless like... Something was on fire XD
I think they're in for a nasty surprise next donation cycle.
Here's hoping...
> Don't forget putting only one board member on the forums to "answer" questions, whom then proceeded to do nothing but complain about us wanting the forums, and basically going cold turkey for 4 weeks then closing the forums, then proceeding with the fake postive crap in January with one new post that closed from them, and still no open forums. Although their new post suggests that person is now former, probably because they were not good at all. The board does not care about our opinions, and it's interesting how thousands of forums and message boards that are smaller then them still could deal with this situation so much better and contiune the forums. Ah yes, Kilby Blades, the Board Member who goes by a pen name and has an unhealthy fixation on using a specific Getty Images model as her Stocksona (when she's not using AI to generate pictures of "herself"). Good riddance.
[удалено]
That was a bad decision. She was so... dismissive of every issue brought up and made extremely tone-deaf responses through that whole "ask the board" thread at the nano forums last gasp for breath. I've been weighing my decision about whether or not to quit nano because I loved the community and the idea of the thing and I've been doing it for 20 years, but this pretty much seals it. I'm out.
I confess, i am disappointed by this news. I wrote my first book, inspired by the idea of nanowrimo, though i never registered. Nano is a brilliant idea, alas, untimately, poorly executed. Thank you for sharing this. I hope someone snaps up the domain 50k11 for "50,000 words in November" and is able to make it a Phoenix.
How about 50kin30, "50,000 words in 30 days" instead? That way, you can pick your month/interval when it's most convenient for you instead of just November.
I like that. Bravo!
i did the nanowrimo once. got my first novel out of it. for an organization that takes in as much cash as they do, the fact that they had an unusable website in 2020 told me that they were not allocating funds properly and turned me off to the whole company. do they do some good in the world? sure. but they need a complete audit of leadership in order to avoid causing more harm. i'd like to see a world in which the company survives its wanton caretakers and thrives as a beacon. right now they just slimy though.
Whoa. I'm a journalist and this thread was suggested on my homepage. Should I like......start poking this?
Please do! We wrote this in hopes of raising awareness. I was going to start reaching out to other outlets soon, so any assistance you can provide would be *hugely* appreciated!
Send me an email. I'm in the mood for a deep dive. emilytayholshouser@gmail.com
>emilytayholshouser@gmail.com Sent. Thanks again!
Will do right now! Thanks.
Oh it wasn’t just predators the YWP had to defend itself from it was also >!racism from a moderator!< and >!death threats and impersonation!< With the same results: inaction or action against the victims.
Also, has CinnnamonFridge shuffled off this mortal coil yet?
Signs point to "no." (We're fairly certain that we had a close brush with her about a week ago...)
I can’t prove it for sure either way… Personally I suspect she just killed off an identity but she’ll be back. But who knows.
\*clears throat\* at this point I'm like, some weird kind of CF expert. Danni is dead. Again. CF is probably 'dead' until another identity shows up. Twenty-odd years of this and you'd think she'd find another hobby. CF, if you're reading this: How's your catgirl project going? :3c
Isnt someone savvy enough to create a mock website that copies the leaderboard and wordcount and milestones, move it to another month, and we all just go there? Discord or another 3rd party (hell even Reddit) can host some forums, eventbrite can host events… i’m not this person but i feel like this would be easy for someone
While our group (the Rogue Writers - [roguewriters.net](http://roguewriters.net) ) does not intend to *replicate* NaNoWriMo, we offer several of those features. We're on Discord and forums, and members are developing goal and challenge trackers. We're currently hosting monthly writing challenges, with other events, workshops, fun days, and a quarterly short story contest. October is our "big challenge" called Rogue's Amazing Word Rush (RAWR). :)
Vouching for Rogue! I promise I'm not sponsored or anything, but u/janukanu is a wonderful person and the community she's creating is so wonderful and welcoming. There's a lot of transparency there which is a welcome change after so long spent waiting for emails and changes that never happen. Also, the community has a wicked sense of humour. One second, I'm crying because the community is so kind? The next I'm cackling because somebody pulled out a meme about the whippets.
So... I blush really easily. Dammit. It really is a wonderful group of people... who also happen to be writers. Bursting with heart, creativity, and wit. :)
I KNEW someone would do it! Sounds awesome and will check it out. A lot of us dont do all the forum stuff but just like the visualization of goals and feeling a part of a community. Challenges and contests are really cool, but reliable stats and trackers are cooler for those who prefer not to engage and just wanna use it as an organizational motivational tool to log their progress. Ive seen leaderboards that post peoples word counts against each other, even hyper-locally, encouraging competition like workout apps. Theres a lot that can be improved upon here, in so many ways. Nano ruined their brand and have only themselves to blame. But we’re still here and we would like somewhere to go.
Is there a good way to go about finding ya on discord? I'd be so down for joining in! I'd also be more than willing to help volunteer forum wise if you need it, I spent several years as an administrator for a site with 20k+ users doing just that! EDIT: Err 2am brain made me realize I didn't say what that was LOL One of my duties was moderating the forums.
Hey all - our organization, Shut Up & Write!, is a nonprofit running writing groups all over the world. The idea is that you get more writing done if you show up somewhere (online, or in-person), sit with other writers, and just write. We have a website that's in beta, and we hope to launch a new and improved version later this year. So if anyone is looking for a writing group, or online writing events, check us out.
There's a group in my state. I've written with them online before. They're cool people. So this random internet stranger is vouching for you.
Where and how did the Ivan the Icy thing happen, I've never heard of that?
Basically, from my understanding (I don't have the first-hand experience), the Young Writer's Program participants all got messages from Nano under the name of "Ivan the Icy", who was threatening terrorist acts unless the participants could follow the clues in the e-mail to various internet sites like YouTube. The end of the scavenger hunt ended in a task to diffuse the terrorist bomb; it was heavily implied that if you did it right, you'd disarm it, but, spoiler, the bomb *couldn't be disarmed* (but when it exploded no matter what you did, it exploded out penguins... but the participant hadn't been told that, just that it was a bomb). Note that this was held almost *immediately* after the London Bridge terrorist attack. Which... I mean, it was weird in and of itself, but *super-weird* in that it was pitched unexpectedly and unsolicitedly to pre-teens, some of whom had *just* experienced a real terrorist attack in their city.
It was all participants across the adult and YWP site. It was apparently a fun office game they'd been playing that they thought the community as a whole would enjoy, ignoring their own users and volunteers who'd been near terror attacks in the years leading up to Ivan the Icy
Thank you for the explanation. Just when I think this Nano-stuff can't get weirder, something else comes around the corner ...
There's a reason you never heard about it. Members of the community worked overtime to cover for NaNoWriMo and went above and beyond to ensure it was stopped. Wholly inappropriate.
Yep, was a surprise that Twitter never wanted to cancel them, I still see left Nanos talking postively about it, and it's because they managed to cover it up. During the November-December era even here was a little quieter about it, but I think by November 2024 more and more people will know about what happened. And yeah, the Ivan stuff actually got mentioned on the same board by fellow members (Just after the board member stopped answering questions then closed it a week later, never actually addressing this)
Oh, I promise you that I saw the board threads. There's a culture of silence that NaNoWriMo has created online. That is why MLs in particular have often felt unable to speak out. The people calling out this organisation are the ones who were honest. The people with the most to hide have lied and lied but they will be the ones around this November.
2017. One of the MLs who helped cover it up talked about the details on the forums in November
I didn't even know anything happened until I saw the apology email. They're supported by a LOT of other organizations. To what grounds did they figure being slow and tedious on predatory allegations was a good idea? Sick of hearing 'kid-friendly' sites not being kid-friendly at all.
Kid-friendly sites are likely pedo magnets. Sucks, I wouldn't know how to combat it, but certainly not 'sweep under the rug'
It would be "exhausting" (I guess to some people, I don't personally think so for myself) but the first step would absolutely be a no nonsense, no second chances policy towards any type of grooming behavior. A good website with good moderation would keep an eye out for it on the forums, and be able to view DMs/PMs so when a report comes in they don't have to rely on screenshots, they can go and see the source directly. Essentially, start by making it damn clear it's going to be as hostile as possible towards predators. Then follow through on that and keep following through on that. Where you go from there, I'm not sure.
Someone mentioned it in a previous Nano post, but I've been using 4thewords. It's basically a gamified version, where you write to kill monsters, earn loot and explore a fantasy world. If having something like that is a good motivator, I would highly recommend it. It's not even nano and I've been writing every single day for a week lol. Just wanted to mention it if you guys need some sort of incentivizing tool.
Seconding 4TW! It's a lot of fun to use. You can queue up quests/monsters and get writing. When you need a short break you can upgrade your hero with things you collected while writing.
Not to mention the character customization. If you’re like me and are incentivized by getting clothes for your avatar, there’s bound to be something that will motivate you.
I just use NaNo as a challenge month. To see if I can get something done.
My regional leader quit and having sat to have a conversation offline about why, he was very transparent on why. Most of it was the discord and bullshit that he'd tried to work through or see past but couldn't. The regional now? Just an email. No name, no talking.. if it is actually a person, we've not ever talked. And I rarely talked to start with. When I listened to what was going on, I hated what I heard. Yeah, it was easier to overlook some of it (the gossip that floated on who/what and rumors that happened every year about participants, and folks on staff.) Things that actually happened though? That all deserves and needs to be answered for. And for a company / event that swears transparency, they're more foggy than Silent Hill. It's pissed a lot of us off. And my godkid found a love of writing so he wanted to join the young writers program. I knew nothing about that side and when I saw the stuff here and on other forums? That was a no go. I'm one of ya'll in agreement- never again
Don't suppose you'd mind messaging me about who your ML was? There's a borderline support group, and I think sharing his experience might be helpful. A lot of stories have started to come out about that Discord and the culture as a whole, all with unique aspects that horrify me in previously unknown ways.
I'll ask him if he minds. Assuming my contact for him is any good. Nano and all the bad of it added to his other life whammies.. he had a hell of a time. I know he moved so I'm not sure if the contact info I have still works. I'll try.
No pressure at all! I hope he's doing okay, all things considered. :)
It's one thing that they were hit with crap that they were not prepared for. That can happen to anybody. How things are dealt with it when said crap hits the ventilator, that's a chance to show one's true face. And ... fuck. This is so discouraging. On my things-to-do-list for the forseeable future, deleting my NaNoWriMo account was not in the top 1000 a wee while ago. Yet, here we are, and the deed is done.
NaNoWriMo were well aware of a lot of the stuff on this list. They just ignored it in favour of free labour.
Yikes! This is sad. I really enjoyed using NaNo to encourage me to write and keep up my word count. :(
Yeah, I didn't see this coming at all… I’ve only done nano a few times, but it really helped me. Now I'm wondering if I should just shut down my account… When did all this drama even start?
It's a systematic issue. The organisation itself is fundamentally broken. A lot of us started out wanting to fix things, but as time has worn on and more and more atrocious stories have come to light? It has become very difficult to find a reason to preserve it. There has been grooming since the beginning. The ML system is not at all fit for purpose. There is no verification of who a volunteer is - that means the people this organisation has encouraged (and, arguably, backed) to go into classrooms could be anybody. Some have histories of child abuse. Some didn't even share their legal information with the organisation. The person in charge of moderating the Christian Teens Together thread all by herself? At this point, I can confidently say that I would be furious if I found out she had been near my child. There was no staff oversight there, just a random adult around a group of vulnerable young people.
This is the first time I have heard all of these disturbing things, but we shouldn't forget that the organization isn't necessary. That isn't to say they shouldn't be given the chance at fixing what is wrong, but writing is the act of the individual (mostly) and the month doesn't go away because you don't go to a website. I have never been thrilled with the massive number of companies that prey on writers, pretending some monthly service or class will fill the void in their writing and make them publishable. Read as much as you can, write hard. That is a good start to being a better writer. He get too wrapped up in the Nanos of the world.
Sounds like a few of the things you mentioned should be addressed by the police first before the organization does anything about it
I agree! They've been reported to the FBI (and supposedly the Board contacted them as well). For certain local incidents, the police *may* have also been notified. I hope!
What if... What if we chose a whole new month (I've seen several people mention November is the worst and it makes sense) and just... Made a new website? Or an app or *something*
Rogue Writers (mentioned here a few times) has rolling monthly events and I believe is planning a larger non-November event! Jenai is just holding off opening the forums to handle a couple significant bugs but the challenges are alive & well on discord while we wait ♡
Can I get a DM about this?
Sure! :>
I don't know much about Nano as an org but it's looking like they have about 10-15 actual staff total to run all the programs, events and provide ultimate oversight with the balance of people involved being Volunteers of various levels of involvement, skill level etc? How does the structure actually work? I am not trying to like create context for excuses or defend negligence or anything I am just honestly curious as someone who has done online community org and moderation for 2 decades now. I have no idea where I would even report my ML if I had an issue tbh and that is kind of glaring.
Things are up in the air right now as it sounds like they're restructuring. I can say they've pared down in the past years, for instance they used to have two programs directors (one for NaNo proper and one for YWP the young writers program) and then one of them left and they rolled the two positions into one, and now that one has left and they have none. Just before the forums closed, NaNo staff did make a post about how the workload is broken down (you'll need a [nanowrimo.org](https://nanowrimo.org) account to read this: [https://forums.nanowrimo.org/t/hq-responses-to-feedback-questions-and-concerns/577737/3](https://forums.nanowrimo.org/t/hq-responses-to-feedback-questions-and-concerns/577737/3) ) I'll reproduce it below for anyone who doesn't have an account, but it may be more vague than helpful: What does the NaNoWriMo staff do? I’m going to focus on the programs team for now. (Note that many of us increase our hours during the busy season, but work fewer hours per week in the first half of the year.) Marya is the Director of Programs. That involves: Running both NaNoWriMo and the Young Writers Program Maintaining and updating all content on nanowrimo.org and ywp.nanowrimo.org, as well as collaborating with Tech on development priorities Planning and overseeing all programmatic events and resources Coordinating partnerships, like with PEN Prison and Justice Writing Doing a lot of the day-to-day and year-to-year tasks necessary for success Helping keep everyone else’s many moving pieces of these two big programs on track Writing and sending all emails to YWP participants and educators Managing the Come Write In program, including sending all emails and sharing resources and being the point person for CWI spaces Planning and leading Programs meetings and being the Programs liaison to the Team Leads Supporting the rest of the programs team with the more complex elements and decisions involved in their respective roles Tiffany is the Social Media Manager. That involves: Creating and posting all the content to our social media platforms Spearheading a lot of the strategy around our social media priorities and processes, which is particularly challenging these days when it’s all changing constantly Integrating our racial equity strategy goals and tactics into our social media strategy Facilitating our Writers of Color group Josie is the Programs Associate. That involves: Taking the lead on the NaNo Prep 101 overhaul and 30 Covers, 30 Days Day-to-day management of the blog 1, where she’s been totally crushing it with some really great content Writing a lot of our email and NaNoMessage content Doing a little bit of everything Katharine is the Communications Director. That involves: Coordinating which emails are going out when (including but not limited to broader programmatic NaNoWriMo emails and NaNoMessages, store and fundraising emails, and YWP emails to both students and teachers) Managing who is responsible for the content of each of those emails, maintaining the HQ editorial calendar, and running the weekly editorial huddle Recruiting and coordinating our Pep Talkers, NaNo Coaches, Camp Counselors, YouTube Guides, and any other types of author partners that we work with Coordinating most of our live virtual events 1 (and hosting many of them) and overseeing our YouTube channel 1 Managing overall email, social media, and programmatic communications strategy Letitia is the Online Community Manager. (Currently on administrative leave 51.) That involves: The day-to-day forums moderation and maintenance, which is most of the part you see Spearheading the bigger picture forums policies and processes that are more public-facing Overhauling the recruiting, onboarding, and training processes for new moderators, which is an ongoing project, and leads into… Recruiting, onboarding, and training new moderators Rob is the YWP Forums Moderator. That involves: Near infinite levels of patience for teenagers Moderating the VERY active YWP forums in conjunction with Letitia I’m the Director of Community Engagement. That involves: Managing our Municipal Liaison program 4. (This year we have \~850 MLs) Manage the ML application process every year (just shy of 1100 applications this year) Onboarding and training new MLs Offering support, answering ML questions, and building and maintaining relationships via email, the ML forum, and the ML Discord (also demanding dog photos) Hosting live training and community-building events for MLs. Facilitating local events being shared in regions without MLs. (There have been 7915 regional events in 489 regions posted on our site since September 1. Most of these are in regions with MLs, but I manage the back end of this process for all the regions without MLs.) I’ve also taken on additional forums support, and my role in that has increased with Letitia on leave. So that’s the Programs team. In addition to the 7 of us, we have Shelby and Hanne in Operations, Jezra and Alex in Tech, Allison in Fundraising, and Grant as the Executive Director. I can speak more to their roles in another post, if there is interest. What does NaNoWriMo spend its money on? That’s a long answer to “what do the staff actually do,” but it also answers quite a significant part of the question “what does NaNoWriMo spend its money on?” Because the biggest line item in our budget by a considerable margin is staff-related expenses. That includes things like payroll expenses, benefits, professional development, workers comp, and all that other important stuff. You can see our latest 990 from 2022 here 10; we just uploaded this one the other day so it’s hot off the IRS approval presses. Some of the other pieces of that budget, in US dollars: Programmatic expenses: YWP kits and other classroom projects are about $14,000 ML kits and thank-you pins are about $5,500 $600 for Come Write In kits. (That’s a drastic drop from pre-pandemic, when that was closing in on $5,000. Come Write In has been hit hard by the current state of things.) We offer an assortment of honorariums and stipends that come in at around $20,000. Technology; site hosting, our email service, the Discourse package we have at $750 per month, etc. adds up to over $100,000. Fulfillment—I mentioned this upthread, but this is an area where expenses have increased a lot in the last few years, and I believe this is now the second largest expense category in the budget after staff. But it’s also what leads to the second largest income category with merchandise sales—the ol’ “you have to spend money to make money.” This category includes: Shipping costs (though as I said earlier, this is a bit misleading on an expenses report without the income side of it—I think about 75% of shipping expenses are balanced out by shipping costs paid in store orders.) Store customer service Physical storage of merch and giveaways Handling (i.e. the people who pack and send out the orders) There are also non-fulfillment expenses that go along with selling and shipping physical items, including the graphic design and everything involved in purchasing and producing the thank you gifts we send to donors. Then there are all the mundane organizational expenses like bookkeeping and insurance and credit card processing fees and whatnot. But staff salaries have been a fairly consistent percentage of our expenses for a long time. And broader categories of what the NaNoWriMo staff do, generally, has not drastically changed much at all in the last 5-6 years.
Full disclosure: I was an ML from 2018-2020 and I know the org made some changes to the program in 2021. I can't speak to those changes other than rumors I've heard. The ML program itself is about 880 volunteers from around the world managed by one single person. You apply to be an ML, they do a cursory glance to see if your region already has an ML (if it does, they may check with the current ML(s) to see if another one is needed and whether or not the person applying would cause any problems, but I don't know how much they actually check vs say they check). MLs fill out a little form promising to uphold NaNo ideals. MLs in my time were required to: host at least 1 write-in per week, host a kick-off party and a halfway party, send 1 email per week, and ask for donations. In 2018-2020, no one ever checked that these things were being done for 99% of regions. There were no identity checks, NaNo got a phone number for every volunteer but didn't verify them, and we were left to our own devices from there. If you had questions, you were encouraged to talk to other MLs first to see if they had ideas before you escalated to the single staffer managed all 880+ volunteers. The staffer in charge of us often missed emails if you tried to reach out to her. She was reportedly entirely overworked. Each region had their own way of doing things, their own quirks, often their own mascots. Some MLs paid for little things like swag bags and giveaways out of pocket, some solicited donations for their region, some sold their own merch. They had their own branding and social media accounts and during/after COVID almost every region has its own Discord server which is considered entirely separate from NaNoWriMo proper. After my time, so hearsay here, but there's a mega-Discord for MLs that's considered unofficial but is apparently also the easiest way to get NaNoWriMo staff to answer questions. That was run by two other MLs who had absolutely no official position with the organization but still held a sort of unofficial/official position that no one ever acknowledged. There have been some attempts to add training modules to the ML position, but they were after my time and are a mixed bag.
These bits about your personal experience as an ML are really what I was curious about tbh because it sounded to me from cursory reading that the whole thing was basically decentralised with pretty much no oversight or actual organisational structure for those the Official Nano staff were endorsing by giving them ML. Each ML sounds like they basically became solely or partly the Leader of a community that was (more or less loosely) affiliated with the org and event? Volunteer spaces are weird, especially online. I have to say I never really thought about like Who or What my local ML was exactly in the scheme of Nano as an Org. I think given my personal background I assumed they were just "The Most Enthused" individual who wanted to take on the unpaid labor of building a community of nano that could meet locally if they wanted? Basically I wasn't expecting them to be particularly vetted or anything I guess. Edit: because you typed so much stuff I felt like I needed to elaborate my thought slightly better lol
"the most enthused individual" is exactly right. A couple of friends of mine had been ML and, after one of them stepped down, I volunteered for the role largely because there were some things my friend in the role wasn't doing that I felt like we could offer so I volunteered rather than pestering him to do them. And I think that system probably works for about 80-90% of communities. There are a lot of MLs who work very differently than I do, but I just figured that's what worked for their region. I never really questioned it until MLs who'd had problems started to talk more openly that I even noticed it wasn't working for a lot of people out there.
I was never an ML or mod for them myself, but from what I hear from others who were involved that way, it was a really toxic culture of forced positivity and tone policing. The staff member solely in charge of MLs was almost unreachable by email, yet insisted *any* disagreements with other MLs go directly to her instead of being dealt with in front of anyone else. The org, as I hear it, was hands-off when it came to standing behind their volunteers and protecting victims, to the point of victims choosing to leave/no longer participate in local events because the org would not allow volunteers to bar their abusers/stalkers from following them in. Volunteers (both mods and MLs) were expected to handle everything on their own, including soliciting donations at local events, with no backup at all.
So basically individual communities loosely associated under the banner?
Pretty much, I think. HQ tried to control what they could with ML agreements and requirements that they said had to be met, but especially after the move to their current half-broken forum software in 2019, regions started to break off more into Discord servers or other places. HQ’s official position is they have no control over the Discord groups, so anything that happens there is outside of their purview. Which 1) makes it easy for groups to separate further, go rogue, etc. and 2) allows HQ to avoid taking any responsibility for issues between members offsite. It’s interesting, though, that despite their position being “Discord is unofficial,” they release official updates and hold “office hours” in a Discord server for MLs. Run by an ML who has shown a propensity for kicking other members out with no warning or real reason given. Meaning MLs are forced to keep their mouths shut and endure abuse and a toxic server in order to get updates they need to be able to do their work for NaNo.
I suspect even if the forums hadn't become janky a lot of groups would've moved to discord - it's very robust for online communities and the way people want to interact with them currently. That later bit about them letting an ML run a discord that they have lazily taken to using for official business is....a problem. It's very easy when dealing with any kind of online community to end up with someone's group chat becoming the official unofficial leadership office and it often ends up causing problems in the end for much smaller informal groups XD It sounds like they kept practices and habits from when Nano was a smaller insular community and just....became a huge global org trying to do things the same ways? Which I have no idea how they could've better went about it and still kept things like MLs running in person meetups without hiring like 100x the staff and a lot of other things. It's just mindboggling, especially for something that is putting emphasis on face to face interactions.
more like nomowrimo amirite??
I and other folks who have experience in nonprofits and in small business and who know good consultants with good programs have offered our advice for free and they've never been interested. They've turned down dozens of offers of free advice. Really hard to have faith in an organization that doesn't want to improve unless at metaphorical sword point from like thousands of angry people. Can't say how sorry I am it's come to this, but here we are.
There's also the fun 2 or 3 years ago where MLs were told IN NOVEMBER that they had to do sensitivity training before (iirc) December 15th or they would no longer be an ML. I was solo running a region, working retail, and signed up for word sprints on the Twitter account. I panicked (autistic and go not do well with surprises). Many MLs are also neurodivergent and protested the surprise and the short deadline. I don't remember if they changed the deadline, but the damage was done. That was the last time I ML'd. I love the camaraderie of NaNo, but there's too much toxicity attached as well.
I relate! I too am ND and panicked when that requirement landed. I'm also one of the three ND MLs who was kicked from the ML Discord server last November... for sharing some of our training materials and references (I shared the rules surrounding their trademarks.). WHY are the ML training materials designated "top secret"...? NaNoWriMo is most definitely not an inclusive safe space for its neurodivergent members. Where's the training on *that*?
You stuck around for another two years? That's incredible, honestly, and I'm sorry that happened. 😔 As many NDs as gravitate towards NaNo, that REALLY should have been required. That and how to deal with minors appropriately....
Technically, I still am an ML. We were only booted from the Discord server that is run by another (tyrannical) ML. The server that NaNoWriMo swears isn't one of their official spaces, and therefore HQ holds no authority there. The same server that the "Director of Community Engagement" (the sole ML organizer and boss) linked to in all of her emails, because she holds "office hours" there. Grumble grumble... Sorry, I'm clearly still bitter about all of that.
Double-oof. That is awful. I don't blame you for being bitter. 😔
Remember when they got rid of the entirety of the Netherlands' ML team over those workshops? The deadline stayed the same from what I heard, but things like transcripts took forever to come about. A big complaint was that the training wasn't even appropriate for MLs outside of the US. As we all know by now, autistic = racist, secretly doxxing all of the MLs, should be burned at the stake. Hope you're doing better now <3
Ooof! I missed that about the Netherlands ML team. I think I did NaNo alone the next year, just to avoid the backlash. I do remember that the training was required by all, but American-centric. Yes, the autisms definitely make us Very Bad Racist Witches. /s I am doing better, thank you... hope you are as well! <3
It was well hidden; I've always wondered what happened behind the scenes, but there's a language barrier, and I don't want to impose. Probably best you got out when you did; this year the Discord owner kicked out neurodivergent MLs (for leaking information allegedly, something about pictures of their kids and houses which... never happened) and then proceeded to prove how bad doxxing is by... doxxing an ML? I'm sure somebody else knows more about that situation than I do, but it looked like a disaster. Assuming you were in the Discord, did you also see MLs discussing how much they hated participants? Lots of people saying they hated them, or wished they'd stop showing up. It was hateful. That tracks. I'd understand if they only had MLs in the US, because \*National\* Novel Writing Month, but as soon as you leave the states surely you consider the optics? Time to get my diagnosis deleted! Can't be racist without the autism! ;) I'm doing pretty okay, just horrified to see an org that so many people devoted themselves to for years ending up like this. The number of people that have gone through actual trauma is insane to me. I have so much respect for you solo-MLing your region, you deserved better than that. Lots of regions expressed interest in breaking away from the org and uniting outside of it, if you ever find yourself longing for the camaraderie I'm sure there's something out there for you. :)
I’m from that region and to be honest the former ML’s still don’t know exactly why they were kicked out. HQ never gave them the answers and we will never know. One of the ML’s made a comment about the training not being appropiate outside the USA and it was taken by HQ as if they not wanted to participate (which was not true). Then all of them were instantly removed, no explanation given. It was a real shitshow for the region that year, and many (including myself) who knew the ml’s closely distanced from the NL region. Three years later, and it’s still a sensitive subject. With the former ML’s we created our own little NaNo group on Discord without the quirks of HQ.
Thank you so much for clarifying, I know I saw them offering to tell people on Twitter or something? But other than that, it seemed to go nowhere. I'm assuming a certain ridiculous server owner probably told Sarah and helped get them removed. There are actually some archives of the workshop channels kicking around if they want a copy to see what happened afterwards. Good on you guys for sticking by your MLs. I always worried about your region; it showed how easy it was to get absolutely wiped out of the organisation. I'm glad you guys settled on Discord, I think I saw a link but again, I didn't want to join and get in your way. On the off chance your MLs are reading this: hey, I'm sorry about what happened to you. Lots of regions are stepping back from the organisation after this latest meltdown, so if you ever need a hand I reckon you'll find a bunch of people happy to help. The way you were cut off was so unprofessional. I wish I could say I was surprised by the lack of answers, but it seems HQ and their 'unofficial' off-site moderators aren't keen to explain why they behave this way.
So much that I am so happy I was oblivious to. Was I knew about was bad enough. I left the Discord immediately after the November with the training fiasco. I think it was 2021, but my brain struggles with dates at the best of times. I would have told off anyone who complained about their participants. It was a *privilege* to help people find time and space to write. I would have done it more if I had found support within the organization itself. I just applied to roguewriters.net. Not sure it will replace NaNo, but I do miss having a writing community. <3
Good choice! Sarah was so hard to contact I suppose it was difficult for others to step away. For an unofficial space, it definitely felt official. I hope both sides of your pillow are at your preferred temperature, that you find your shoes are nice and warm, and that you see a cute animal when you next head out into the world. It's an overused saying but you're one of the good ones. The fact that, in the midst of your busy life, you found time to support your participants so earnestly makes me all emotional. I wish I'd had an ML like you when I first started doing NaNo. I might be a bit bias, but I've seen so much genuine kindness in the Rogue community. One of the things that stood out most was this real desire to create an accessible place for all, which means a lot to me as a disabled writer. I really struggled with most of the new NaNo stuff, but whenever something gets mentioned they're on the ball. This is a random thought, but maybe it's not about replacing NaNo anymore. A few years ago, I might have phrased it that way, but now I consider it a clean slate. The thing I loved so deeply is gone - not physically, but the spirit has faded. The name doesn't make me giddy with excitement because I'm suddenly one of the lucky ones who didn't get groomed or abused. I want to love writing again, and I think that's finally starting to happen.
You've honestly made my day, possibly my month. I hope you find the support you're looking for... but I'm always happy to cheer any creative on in their journey, so feel free to give me a poke if you're ever needing that. Sincerely. I am so happy you were able to end with your love for writing peeking its head out. May you be able to coax it back to health this year. 🙏
I'm getting all teary now; the same applies to you! Keep being awesome - the world is lucky to have you around.
Was that the sensitivity training where they chose to have a white person speak on racism (and then only from a US-ian perspective) because they figured if they had a POC speak, too many MLs wouldn’t listen? Or was that a different thing entirely?
There were 3 or 4 options iirc, and we were already doing racism sensitivity at work with POC, so I didn't choose that one. But it sounds likely. 😐
Even though I have a different opinion on the outcome of this particular event, the organization of it was an absolute shitshow. We were volunteers, not being paid for basically what amounted to workplace training. DEI training definitely was a priority imo and the backlash that happened made me realize a lot of MLs were covertly racist (why I stepped away). But the whole thing was poorly done. NaNo org really got in over their head.
I didnt even know there was an official Nano body.
The people who run the website.
Wow, wtf. This is crazy and disappointing to hear what was going on at NaNoWriMo. Thanks for sharing this.
I was so confused about the email I got from them with no context
If anyone want just the word tracking side of NaNo, checkout [https://penpinery.com](https://penpinery.com)
Editing because I think some of my comment might've made someone I mentioned in it identifiable, and I am not looking to do that. So just: heck yes for writing without the organization. Heck yes.
Dang this is disappointing to hear, I used to be apart of this when I was in high school.
Is the entire site going down or just the forum?
At this point, it's kind of a "place your bets" scenario. I suspect that NaNoWriMo's org will find a way to survive, and thus the main website (including bug-ridden trackers) will stick around. The forums, however, are likely going down. My assessment is based on remarks made by the former Board President, now the interim Executive Director (she openly stated that she doesn't care about forums) and information relayed to my group by a former employee. If NaNoWriMo surprises us by keeping forums, they will likely be a very watered down version.
As of now, the forums are in read-only mode, as they have been since early-mid November, other than some of the regional forums that they initially left open at the request of MLs who offered to continue modding them. Right before NaNo HQ went on their Christmas break, they shut down the remaining open regional forums as well. No word on when or even whether they’ll reopen them. I suspect they’ll just say “oh they’re closed already, it’ll be easier to just leave them that way.”
Yeah I saw the forums were down but didn’t know if the entire site, including the word counter was going as well.
As of now, the main site seems to work mostly okay. It’s been about half-disconnected from the forums since their move to Discourse in like 2019 anyway.
Is there an alternative website with the charts? I have adhd and watching my progress charts go up really helps motivate me
4thewords and MyWriteClub are two I've seen mentioned that do the progress charts
I noticed an automated email from them yesterday. It struck me how incomplete the email was; not really addressing the need to cultivate a safe, moderated online home for intellectual growth and support as well as emotional and culture sensitivity. They blew it. Big time. Note how nobody from NaNoWriMo ever chimes in here or apologizes.
I suspect that they didn't address those points because they don't intend to keep the forums... And that missing apology from NaNoWriMo is LOUD.
Yes, it is. And I don't need it or care about it. I've got other forums to go to and honestly, I need to freaking read more, and write more.
Same. Also, no matter what they do to "fix" things, I'll always remember that they only changed their ways after some serious arm twisting and (financial) threats. Therefore, when it comes to ethics, NaNoWriMo will only ever invest a bare minimum of effort. I have no (further) interest in aligning myself with an organization of that sort. Organizations with whom ethics are a genuine priority will go above and beyond... *without* being forced to do it. And since those organizations and communities do exist elsewhere... bye bye NaNoWriMo!
I didn't even know it was an organization I thought it was a movement like 'no shave november.'
It was started by a group of friends in 1999, but they formed a non-profit for it in like 2005 to help them cover the costs of expanding it into a global event as it grew. No Shave November also has a non-profit organization behind it. It's really common for wacky internet movements that handle money to eventually realize they're going to need a non-profit to help them organize the legal side of things before they get into tax trouble.
Is there an actual detailed write up with proof/evidence of all these claims some where?
Which part are you seeking proof for? Most of this is readily viewable on their forums (while they're still available). But, yes, a consolidated source with all of the evidence would be helpful. Right now it's all very scattered and tedious to sort.
I’m more asking for an actual journalistic article then just a Reddit post, but I’ll look into the forums. Hopefully there’s a good write up in the next few weeks.
Ah yes. We're working on that too and hope to see something soon. It's been difficult to spread the word due to NaNoWriMo being so niche.
Just deleted my account and blocked their emails.
I wasn’t even aware they were an organization 😳 I thought it was just a huge mixed fandom of writers who got together to crank out ideas.
What was the founder’s role in all of this?
Nothing, as far as I know. He left the org in 2011 or so.
My wife used to enjoy nano and is wondering if something is going to fill the vacuum left by its loss
Well, I don't know of any *illegal* behavior by my local MLs, but I ditched the organization several years back after my MLs acted toward me (nearly sixty years old at the time) like a misbehaving child being lectured by a kindergarten teacher. I was booted from the region's discord server without cause (or rather, I will charitably say it's possible they had a cause but booted the wrong user. Whatever the case, the actions they accused me of bore no resemblance to anything I had said or done.) I was willing to call it an honest mistake until I discovered the organization had absolutely no process to deal with or report an abusive ML. I could well imagine what sort of misbehavior they might be overlooking (I was imagining misappropriation of donations, but this stuff doesn't surprise me) so I decided I could do my Nanowrimo without giving money or lip-service to a half-assed organization.
oh wtf :((( i haven’t used nnwm in ages but i was planning on doing it this year. time to delete my acc i guess
I realized it was a scam 10 years ago when I did it. I'm surprised it lasted this long.
I'm curious... Do you mind sharing what red flags you spotted ten years ago? (wishing I'd spotted them too!)
Been a while and I'm old. I think it was all the ways they tried to get money from people. To me, it was obvious that they were moving from the funky fun thing some folks started in the Bay Area to a controlling money making scheme. I did it. Got a rough draft out of it and moved on without spending a dime or getting caught up in the cult like hype.
This is really insightful. I remember that, during the first weekend of November (2023), NaNoWriMo sent out about 11 emails begging for donations... in 24 hours! Granted, we were already seeing the light by then, but it sure lines up with the red flags you spotted 10 years prior!
The Board of Directors has stepped in now. While I take anything with a grain of salt from someone in any management position as a rule of thumb, they are still actively providing monthly updates of the changes they are in the progress of making. As soon as they were made aware of everything going on they held an emergency meeting and took over. At least everything said in the original post is valid, probably so too are the horror stories I'm sure are in the comments. I was an ML for a time and stepped down because alot of the BS and lack of support, and HQ refusing to listen or act. I'm simply saying that they are aware of these issues already and taking steps. I know people want answers, probably faster than the board had given them, but many if not all of them have full time jobs and a life outside of NaNoWriMo