Liz Cultivates | L.M. Fern

You may have noticed that my yearly tradition of posting about NaNoWriMo has been decidedly missing from my content this month. 

Well, there’s a reason for that.

Recently, the official NaNoWriMo organization has come under some (read: a lot) of scrutiny due to some statements made by folks in the organization. In an official statement, the nonprofit stated that artificial intelligence can be a useful tool in helping people gain success in creative spaces, especially disabled folks and folks from other marginalized communities. On the surface, that sounds fine, but when you analyze that further, it appears like an organization founded to support writers and artists is saying that AI tools (which are, famously, trained on our work without our permission and effectively stealing our art) are okay to use when working creatively. There are entire dissertations waiting to be penned here, and Alex and I have talked about AI on the podcast ad nauseam, but the core of this argument is that NaNoWriMo’s seeming endorsement of the use of bots in creative work has led to a lot of backlash. (The Slate piece I linked above is actually a pretty good summary of the issues.)

It goes without saying (even though I’ve said it a lot) that my feelings about AI are zero percent positive. And a good number of the NaNo community (including my local group) have denounced the organization for their shortsighted (at minimum) and gross endorsement of AI tools.

As if that weren’t enough, there are numerous allegations that the organization did nothing to investigate or rectify claims of child grooming in some of its subgroups, taking forever to remove the offending moderators and just generally not responding in what one would assume is the appropriate amount of speed when allegations like this surface. In addition, community group leaders were not required to do background checks, even though they often directly interact with underage writers.

So, in solidarity with all my fellow writers and artists, I deleted my NaNo account and have decided not to publicly participate in the “regular” NaNoWriMo activities this year.

One of my local writing groups is still organizing writing meetups and doing collaborative sprints. We’re all still supporting one another – this time of year is novel-writing time, after all, and without the “official” NaNoWriMo trappings, something seemed a little off, or empty. We have come together as a community, and even when the original reason for our meeting has gone away, we still exist as a group! 

All of this is to say, it’s decidedly NaNOWriMo this year, but I am still participating in #writingmonth. I made an account on a new tool, aptly called WritingMonth.org, and I’m still huffing and puffing through these final chapters of my manuscript. I think I finally figured out where I’m ending this monster, so my goal for the month is to just finish the dang thing. So I am going to head to my favorite coffee shop, grab a drink, and get to work.

If you’re so inclined, here is my Writing Month account. Be my buddy!