Death Of NaNoWriMO ?! And I can't seem to really care....

I'm not sure if the second part is true but it is defiantly an end of an era.

At the time of writing this blog, the official NaNoWriMo site is still up and operational, however a simple google search of just 'NaNoWriMo' will come up with the official site that has no mention of the company closure. However this is followed up by many sites with articles talking about the controversy and the end of the company.

As a quick refresher, the writing community (especially indie authors) was in an uproar in 2023 when information was released that moderators in the young writers program that was sponsored by the company were (I have to use the word) allegedly, were grooming underage writers to go to a different website were even more predators lurked to groom children.

This lead to a concern of user safety of course and when offical NaNoWriMo season (November) came around the company had released a statement supporting the use of AI writing. When criticism arose from that, a week later they had changed their response to acusing those who were agisnt the use of AI for writing were "classist" and "discrimitory of those with handicaps."

This is obvisously a very poor attempt at gaslighting those who participated into thinking that they were the bad guys. The logic behind it being classist stating that it helps those who can't afford the help they need to log their words is laughable at best.

At any rate my personal history with nano has only been very brief with only maybe about 7 years of attempted participation in their 20 year history. I have always found the company itself to be a bit clique-ish - very do or don't type of mindset which I kinda discourage as it puts an unreasonable amount of pressure on some people.

But the process and ritual of gathering my notes and hoodies and candles and trying to make it a daily practice was kind of enjoyable.

I don't think that I even "completed" the 50k in 30 days challenge - at least by their standards. With at least one book under my belt (well...one and a half....) I think I can fairly say the the 50K in 30 days is while not impossible but rather just.....kinda....inconvent in this stage in my life.

I think I will go ahead and just keep tracking my progress (word count) with trackbear.com - no pressure there or on myself.

:)

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