Finding out two days before NaNoWriMo that Facebook stories don’t really “do” links that are clickable is more than irritating considering the fact that it appears either a decent proportion of the international WriMo community (if unfamiliar, see previous blog) seems to have evacuated Twitter (I’m not calling it by a letter, it’s stupid) and many haven’t arrived on BlueSky yet (yes, I know it’s invite only, because it’s still being built and yada yada yada - I don’t have to be logical and reasonable when I’m having a moan about something, okay?).
You might be wondering why it matters. Well, it doesn’t, I guess. Except that it does… I’ve been a part of the NaNo community for a long time, have done really stupid things (great things, really great things!) like fly over to San Fransisco for the last Night of Writing Dangerously because I couldn’t square it with myself to let the idea of never going sit right - I just couldn’t. I also went from thinking, who are these mad people who finish NaNo in a week and I can’t write five thousand words in a day to doing my first 10K day, then having three in a month and then finishing in four days (secret: no sleep, lots of caffeine, and being a considerable chunk younger than I am, and currently feel) so during NaNoWriMo and Preptober, I write a lot about each, and people actually read it. People don’t just read it in - oh God I’m using a phrase from work that I hate, but whatever - penny numbers like they do over the rest of the year, a lot of people read it, probably because it’s a lot more focused - you could say hyper focused, if you wanted to… - and the people reading it are interested in NaNo.
Unfortunately though, as much as you can Google blogs about NaNo or whatever and I would come up SOMEWHERE (no, I haven’t Googled myself to see where and no, I’m not going to even just for poops and giggles) most of that “traffic” has been generated through Twitter, and my Instagram page, but for reasons I don’t feel the need to go into here, my Instagram page is currently (and for the foreseeable future) set to private because of something which happened that just made me feel a bit uncomfortable about it being open access.
Now, whilst the blog is and always has been something I write more for myself than anything, I won’t lie, it is exciting to see the readership of it grow during November. It is the sort of thing I enjoy as part of NaNoWriMo, partly because writing blogs can be a good way to get some words in that aren’t focused on the novel and my family have always said a change is as good as a rest (this is BS, do not believe it! Rest is always best!) so swapping out of novelling mode can be good for a bit to just give myself a little time to not need to be thinking about what happened next. (I’ve said before that I don’t write novels so much as incident reports of what happened when the characters wandered off, so those kind of periods of only passively engaging with whatever project I’m writing are hugely beneficial). With the forums appearing to have depended into a literal dumpster fire at this stage, and the fact they’re not something I’ve ever really had too much engagement with since we moved to the new site (I know, it’s really not new anymore and I can’t even remember what year it was we last moved) and all the changes going on in social media at the moment (whether you think people are abandoning Twitter or people who don’t pay for Twitter services are just getting little to no visibility) it feels like a massive loss of community, even more so than COVID was and because of being an American run organisation with a global reach, we kept REALLY tight restrictions for a very long time, even when individual countries would have allowed our events to go ahead (not challenging that decision by the way, I think it was the right decision to put everyone into a similar or the same boat.
Given how stressful NaNoWriMo can be and the fact it can feel somewhat triggering for some people’s mental health for a number of reasons, I find it really challenging to accept the loss of community that seems to be happening, and whilst there are still a number of tools like Discord, and in person write ins are back to happening, that’s just the way it feels for me at the moment. We’re also having to accept that changes in venue spaces (I’m thinking particularly in the UK at the moment, though I appreciate it may be replicated elsewhere) accommodating events like we used to has become harder and without compromise, local writing events may not be possible anymore. Pubs that used to reserve a back room space for no deposit want something like ten to fifteen pounds per head deposit and when you’re taking about any major city that gets pricey fast. Lots of places are closing down, and with the way that prices are going up, a lot of writers, particularly the young studenty types, the very young relying on their parents type, or the broke writers trying to make money from their art and self-expression types are stuck in a position where they can’t really afford to attend some of the venues that are possible to use. But despite all of that mess, NaNo is nearly here, and it’s going to happen, and it’s going to be messy and weird and not everything is going to plan, but like Chris Bay and the founders did back in 1999, we’ll find a way. Because we always find a way, eventually.
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