NaNoWriMo Alternatives

writing goal trackers, subreddits, discords, oh my!

Nov 01, 2024

Dear Friends,

While I’ve never been able to write a novel in a month, I do admire the community aspect of trying to accomplish this feat. I’ve always found it sweet that writers join forces to support each other through the daunting ordeal known as novel-writing. Of course there are the US-centric reasons for November being less-than-ideal, but truly any month has its burdens. Trying to complete such a lofty goal in the penultimate month of the year gives it an extra sharpness to what is already a monumental undertaking. Goals! Resolutions! Intentions! All those promises we made to ourselves back in early January rising to haunt us in the wake of Halloween!

While it’s not necessarily for me, I do sometimes try to grab onto the tail of the zeitgeist and use it as an excuse to try to play it a little more loose than usual and generate some new words. While I can be a little cheeky about NaNoWriMo as a personal on-going failure, my glass-half-full response is that any new word count generation is a success, regardless of some silly number1.

My personal problem is I tend to be a meticulous editing-while-writing writer. I’m also not a write-every-day writer. I’m an oh-the-muses-are-back writer. A strike-while-the-iron-is-hot writer. None of these are inherently bad things. They’re just things. I’m pretty set in my ways and my writing practice at this point, but there’s something to be said about putting yourself in an uncomfortable situation to generate new writing…

Which is why, you know, maybe I’ll give it a go for the twentieth time.

Yep, that’s my account. Happy 20 years of trying and failing. 🫡

NaNoWriMo—the official organization behind the National Novel Writing Month brand—found themselves in hot water a month ago for failing to condemn generative AI (a contentious and much-maligned topic in the world of publishing, as I’m sure you already know). NaNo’s original position was that banning generative AI from its space would potentially create an ableist and classist policy. Which I found to be a pretty hilarious hot take. As if most blue-collar workers have the bandwidth and resources to write a novel in a month. Similarly, I don’t think it would be controversial (RE: ableist accusation) to say that tasking oneself with drafting a novel in a month excludes many different people due to the realities of mental health struggles or neurodiversities. So would it be controversial—to use the org’s own words—to say some aspect of NaNoWriMo is already inherently classist and ableist?

Part of NaNoWriMo’s original statement on the use of GenAI

This GenAI discourse is in addition to some other musty behavior, such as a previous controversy surrounding failing to foster a predator-free space for youth—including the call coming from inside the house via NaNo’s volunteer mod team.

This context is important because it’s suddenly November 1st, and many people have decided to divest from NaNoWriMo as an organization because of their poor decision-making (and poor handling of controversies) in the near past. So while I’m not here to rehash all the NaNo discourse in detail (plenty of people have already written about this topic and covered the timeline of both NaNo’s generative AI issues as well as grooming allegations), I am here to discuss alternatives in the aftermath of the fallout.

Finally, it’s time to activate one of my minor superpowers(!): spending too much time on the internet falling down various research rabbit holes while looking for information. In this case, it’s crawling through subreddits and Slack channels and Discord servers for NaNo alternatives. And I’m happy to say I’ve found nearly 20 different spaces/methods (one for every year I’ve failed NaNo…) to practice novel-writing in November independent of the official org.

As always, I try to hold a space on this newsletter for all sorts of creatives. Whether you’re a visual artist or a poet or a game writer, there is something to be said about trying to honor your creative practice and work on a rough draft of something large-scale within the span of a month. So even if you are not a novelist, I present some NaNoWriMo alternatives below. Perhaps while falling down your own rabbit holes of research you may find some inspiration to dive into a formidable creation you’ve been waiting for the perfect (or in our case: imperfect) time to begin.

The following list is in no specific order. Nor is it exhaustive. But if you’ve found yourself here on November 1st itching to write 50,000 words in a month (or something of similar ambition), perhaps you can sign up to one or more of the resources below and find yourself in a community of people cheering you on. I hope you remember to cheer them on too.

Until next time,
JD