It's been a while since I posted. I've been busy, but I'm still alive and doing well. So if you were wondering, wonder no more!
It's no secret that I used to be a big fan of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) which was, initially at least, a movement to get a person writing creatively for no other gain than to create. The idea was simple: Start the beginning of the month of November with a 'blank page' and write until the end of the month with a target of 50 000 words. It was crazy, zany but, importantly, it was 100% achievable.
I've been doing nanowrimo for over a decade and was successful a couple of times. Followers of this blog would know that I'd pitch the nanowrimo idea once a year (during the years I participated) by writing a post about it and its benefits while trying to make the daily word count of 1667 and I mostly succeeded doing just that.
Nanowrimo has done a lot of good. It has made strangers friends and sometimes even marriage partners. It has helped people write up their thesis, it has launched authors into the sphere of having content that they might one day publish (even though this was never the ultimate goal of the movement). In my own life, nanowrimo was how I got into D&D, how I met people who've made deep impacts on me, and helped teach me that I could if I put my mind and heart to it.
So it wasn't willy-nilly that I decided to delete my nanowrimo account a couple of days ago. It was with a heaviness I haven't felt in a long time.
What spurred it?
Nanowrimo recently release a statement (which they've now heavily edited) stating their stance on AI. I managed to find a copy of the 'first post' before they edited it and edited it again. I'm posting it as a picture, but for those who can't access images, it basically states that those who are unsupportive of using AI in writing are classist and ableist.
This broad-strokes acceptance of the use of AI in an activity that was meant to encourage human creativity in writing, and the statement that opposition to their acceptance was classist, ableist, and privileged, really rubbed me the wrong way. Let me be clear, the issue isn't using things like Grammarly to fix what has been written, but rather generative AI that generates the writing without enough creative input to call it the work of the data entrier.
The other matter that ground my gears was the emphasis on publication. The original idea that Chris Baty came up with wasn't "let's get 21 people to publish or otherwise be considered failures". Creative expression, like any other hobby, can bring growth by doing without hitting professional or published spheres.
A tangent...
In writing this blog post, I got interrupted by a five-year-old who wanted my attention (not mine, I'm still allergic). We took out some Rory's Story cubes and crafted a story together using the pictures on the cubes as prompts. While it did throw me off of my thought of how I wanted to conclude the post, it did remind me of the magic of creativity and the joy that can come with it - even when it's only a single moment that will not be made permanent by publication or whatnot.
Nanowrimo has effectively killed that joy for me in my support for them. They've told me my disagreement makes me inferior and icky. And the knowledge that they're following the money of an AI-related sponsor over the original vision that made nanowrimo the highlight of my year is frustrating and heart-breaking.
Conclusion
I won't stop writing because of NaNoWriMo's actions, but it will no longer be the reason I do decide to write. And nothing they say now will bring me back to them. Because even in their final edited
post which takes away the hurtful remarks, this wasn't done out of actual remorse or realisation that they were wrong. It has been to save face.
And what a unwashed, grubby face that is.
