More than a decade ago, when I had begun to realise that writing was a part of me I couldn’t ignore, two elements were key to honing my skills: the writing/blogging community on Twitter and National Novel Writing Month. Both helped me take my writing more seriously by providing community and encouraging regular writing habits.
The mention of NaNoWriMo causes snobbery in some circles. The real Literati gather at university or in North London living rooms, at film or literary festivals, book fairs or writer conferences. But for many, including marginalised communities, writers late to the craft, introverts or those who nurse their dreams in private, online communities are a lifeline. A route to finding courage. Permission to prioritise our art. A way to make dreams real in a way that isn’t too confronting.
This blog is full of mentions of Twitter communities and NaNoWriMo. I participated in challenges and recommended them to new writers. I donated to NaNoWriMo, bought merch like planners, coasters and posters that are still in my garden office to this day. I enjoyed the inspiring emails from NaNoWriMo affiliated writers that landed in my inbox. I liked the little halo on the profile pic that you’d get for donating. I loved the rudimentary word count tracker and the teeny line graph mapping progress. Those days still hold nostalgia for me. The community gave me a sense of belonging. The mission of the early internet and the NaNoWriMo project felt wholesome. Like we were building something together. It wasn’t exploitative. It was shared power.
I don’t feel like that anymore. Like many, I’ve more or less abandoned X. I used to rely on Twitter for a range of news, bookish accounts and art but my feed is no longer what it was. I go direct to chosen accounts rather than be exposed to vitriol in my home feed. Thanks Musk.
Then there’s NaNoWriMo. I didn’t participate every November or even always meet the 50k word goal the years I did participate. But I felt endless gratitude to NaNoWriMo. It nudged me to overcome fear and procrastination. It taught me that there are no shortcuts. Self-doubt might still be a companion. You still have to fill that blank page one line at a time. You might not like the results but some days you find flow and magic happens. It was a key lesson. A decade later, writing is now a way of life. I don’t need NaNoWriMo anymore, but others do. And NaNoWriMo failed them.
Last year, an investigation was launched into predatory behaviour of moderators against minors, who sent kids explicit materials. The leaders of the organisation failed in their basic safeguarding duty to protect participants. Community forums were shut down. The leadership was defensive and had covered things up. Trust was shattered.
Instead of treading carefully and rebuilding that trust, NaNoWriMo squandered what remaining goodwill they had. A few days ago, NaNoWriMo made a statement having been called out on one of their sponsors, Pro Writing Aid. I don’t have a problem with writers using ProWritingAid to polish their writing. I do have a problem with NaNoWriMo putting out a statement to confirm their support for generative AI in writing and to label anyone opposing this view as classist, ableist and privileged. I do have a problem with an organisation, founded entirely as a conduit for writer’s creativity to pretend to be blind to the issues around generative AI and being entirely manipulative in their framing of their decision.
NaNoWriMo’s statement resulted in multiple resignations from its boards. Affiliated writers, including Erin Morgenstern, asked for their names to be removed from the website. Like many others, I deleted all the projects I had uploaded to the site over the last decade and closed down my account. On top of the ethical concerns, it’s not a big leap to question whether uploaded projects could in the future be used as fodder for generative AI.
It’s gutting to have an organisation whose original core mission was to encourage creativity to sell out this way. A betrayal of values. Not only that, NaNoWriMo used the language of social justice to dig their heels in and defend their decision. Pure gaslighting. Frankly, on the heels of the response to the predatory moderators, it gives the whiff of an organisation that prioritises its own institution above the community it serves. I’m so sad that beautiful communities are sold out this way.
AI can be helpful for admin tasks. But for the act of writing itself, it accelerates the loss of authentic voice. For goodness’ sake, that’s what we need from all writers, especially marginalised communities. Not the pressure to write more speedily, but the space to be real, to percolate our thoughts and embrace our individuality, not feed an AI mishmash that crushes originality, that steals our ability to think, that ends up doing the jobs we should be doing. God, it makes me want to cry. It’s such a con.
Art requires effort. It requires us to internalise and to be brave enough to share our internal worlds. It can’t be replaced by machines because machines don’t have a soul. They don’t have the individual experiences and life stories that make us who we are. Being a storyteller is meaningful precisely because it conveys the human experience. A machine, by its very nature, can’t do that. So no, NaNo, I won’t forgive you. I will miss what you once were.
Change is hard. In the last few decades, the pace of tech change has moved so fast that the regulators take years to catch up. Add to that bad actors and it’s a complex minefield. Regulating too fast risks stifling innovation. Too slow and we fail to safeguard end users. It doesn’t take a seer to predict pitfalls down the road, but our policy makers are too bogged down in surviving today to plan for tomorrow. Lobbyists have too much power. Regulatory boards don’t have enough teeth. There’s no doubt that generative AI causes economic harm to creatives. The tools aren’t ethical. Their makers don’t deal in good faith. They are developed by harvesting original works without compensation. Vast rows of servers consume enough energy to undermine climate goals merely to spit out distorted truths.
The trust that creatives have for certain platforms is quickly and irreparably draining, resulting in a power imbalance because, don’t you know, creatives don’t need to be fairly compensated to live their dream… Sod that. We all know that a creatives are a gift. What is life without film and literature and music and art? How do we survive as a society if humans don’t guard and hone our capacity to think creatively? Do people really believe that science and creativity are separate things? Doesn’t one pollinate the other and should we cede our creative thinking to AI just because it is easy/quick/cheap (for now)?
I believe in the power of tech to make people’s lives better. To do the jobs that no one wants so people trapped in those jobs can escape to do their dream jobs. I like sentient robots like any other speculative fiction writer, but bloody hell, the well-being of humankind comes first. Always. Not the enrichment of tech companies at the expense of the communities they serve. I think of the people we need turning away from creative jobs or from journalism because of recent developments in AI and it guts me. We need more dreamers, thinkers and storytellers. Not regurgitated art.
Change is inevitable, yes. But for me, tech regulation can’t come too soon. There are bright sparks already in play. BlueSky, a decentralised rival to X, has felt like old Twitter these past weeks as its join up rate accelerates. A number of writers have discussed setting up replacements to NaNoWriMo. I hope they succeed. Community is important. We don’t need NaNoWriMo to write together. The internet can be a beautiful thing and it doesn’t have to be exploitative.