Thoughts on A Message from NaNoWriMo

I got an email today from the National Novel Writing Month head office, as I suspect many did. I have feelings. And questions.

First, I genuinely believe someone in the office is panicking and backtracking and did not endorse all that was said and done in the last month. From what I understand, the initial generative AI comments were not fully endorsed by all NaNo staff and board members, or even known in advance. It’s got to be rough to find out your organization kinda called people with disabilities incapable of writing a story on their own, and overtly called people with ethics racists and ablists, by reading the reactions on social media — and then your organization’s even worse counter-reactions on social media.

I still think NaNoWriMo has a good mission and many people in it with good goals.

But I think NaNoWriMo is SERIOUSLY missing a point in its performative progressivism. (For the record, I actually support many progressive policies, and I support many of the same concepts NaNoWriMo claims to support, and I applaud providing materials to underfunded schools and support to marginalized groups historically not producing as many writers, etc. The issue here is not “whether or not woke is okay” — it’s whether or not the virtue signaling is still in line with the core mission.)

Also, honesty. (That’s below.)

NaNoWriMo has ALWAYS been on the honor system AND fully adaptable to needs. Some years I had a schedule which absolutely did not allow for 50k new words — I adjusted my personal goals. (I did not claim a 50k win if I did not achieve one, but I celebrated a personal win for achieving personal goals.) Some years I wrote 50k in one project, and some 50k across multiple projects. NaNoWriMo has acknowledged this for years with the “NaNo Rebel” label.

So saying out of the blue that because some people cannot achieve 50k in a month, we should devalue the challenge (y’know that word has a definition, right?) and allow anyone to claim a win whether they actually wrote 50,000 words or not… Well, that’s not only rude to writers who actually write, but it was unnecessary, because project goals have always been adjustable to personal constraints.

It’s also hugely unhelpful to participating writers. Yeah, writing 50k words in a month is tough. That’s why it’s a challenge. Allowing people to “generate” (quotes intentional) words from a machine does not improve their skills. No one benefits from using AI to generate work — not the “writer” who did not write those words and so did not practice and improve a skill, not any reader given lowest-common-denominator words no one could be bothered to write, and not the actual writer whose words were stolen without compensation to blend into the AI-generated copy-pasta.

Hijacking language about disability to justify shortcuts and skipping self-improvement is just cheap, and it’s not fair to people with disabilities.

I would much rather see NaNoWriMo say, “Hey, we don’t all start in the same place, and we may need different goals. Here’s overt permission to set personal goals” (or maybe even, “here are several goals to choose from”), “and if you are a NaNo Rebel, rock on! This creativity challenge does require you to do your own work, in order for you to see your own skills improve.”

And, honesty. Part of why I don’t feel great about NaNoWriMo’s backtracking and clarifications is that they’re still not being open.

The same email links to an FAQ about data harvesting, which opens with this sentence:

Users of our main website, NaNoWriMo.org, do not type their work directly into our interface, nor do they save or upload their work to our website in any way.

This is technically correct in the present tense, but for years it wasn’t. Every NaNo winner for years pasted their work into the word counter for verification. That was, by every web development definition, uploading.

I do think addressing the question of the validator would be appropriate when refuting accusations of data harvesting, for clarity and assurance regarding any past harvesting, especially giving today’s AI scraping concerns. I wasn’t the only person to immediately think of the validator when reading the FAQ. (I was, however, wrong to originally state it as present-tense in this blog.)

“Well, sure, we had the word counter, but it didn’t store your work, and you should have known that’s what we meant” is not a valid expectation when you are refuting data concerns. Just as “You should have known what we meant” is not a valid position when clarifying statements about the use of generative AI.

To be clear, I do not believe that NaNoWriMo is harvesting my work, or I wouldn’t have verified wins with their word counter. But that’s not because of this completely bogus assurance that their website never had the upload that they’ve required for win verification.

My point is, there are a number of different people making statements for NaNoWriMo, and at least some of them are not competent to make clear, coherent, and correct statements. Either they are not aware that the word counter existed, or they’re not aware that pasting data into a website that uses that data to process a task is in fact uploading, or they are not aware that implying they’ve never collected data they did previously collect in a FAQ is dishonest. Or they are not aware that commenting or DMing users to castigate them for expressing legitimate concerns is not a good practice. Or they are missing the whole point of a writing challenge and emphasizing instead the warm fuzzies of inclusion without actually honoring that marginalized people also want to feel a sense of accomplishment rather than being token “winners.”

I judged another writing challenge, once, which included an automatically-processed digital badge for minimum word count. One of the entries was just gibberish repeated to meet the minimum word count. Okay, “participant” who did not actually create anything — you got your automated digital badge, so I guess you feel cool and clever. But did you meet the challenge? Did you level up? Did you come out stronger and more prepared for the next one?

That’s what generative AI use does. Cheap meaningless paper “win,” no actual personal progress. That’s why we didn’t want it endorsed in NaNoWriMo. That’s what NaNo is missing in their replies.

And I remain suspicious of replies, anyway, while absolute falsehoods are in their FAQ.

It’s sad, because I’ve truly enjoyed NaNoWriMo in the past. And I actually do think they could recover from past scandal and current AI missteps. But it does not look at this time like they’re on that path.