Right, so without rehashing all of the details of what has already been shared on so many different platforms now, I want to talk about what is going on with NaNoWriMo, why it's important and why it sucks.
Once a time, in what was actually a different century, way back in 1999, twenty one writers decided to do something a little bit crazy and try to write fifty thousand words (the industry standard minimum length for a novel) in a month. I was going to write 'in thirty days' but I want to say the original one happened in July, so it wouldn't have been thirty days!
From humble beginnings it became something incredible, because it spread across the globe, with participants in a number of different languages, with forums and somewhere in the last 25 years, the Young Writer's Program was born, and the program started support, well, young writers. You have to be 13 to be on the forums, or to have an account which doesn't have your parent's email address on it, but you can job younger, particularly if your teacher or another educator is running a program to help get young people writing. You can also access the main forums from age 13 as well, where young writers can ask question of, less young writers, or can just discuss life, the universe and anything else.
Somewhere along the way, because of a number of different reasons, the forums have become a problem both on the 'main' site and also on the YWP and there are a lot of details to that, and it's shit, because these spaces are a refuge for many of us, a haven for many of us, and they have been the space where we are social, where we find our answers and where we find our friends. These spaces are sacred in a way, but right now, they're locked, and that is the way that they should stay until they can be managed safely.
Writers are a lot like other artists; they're strong but they're also really fragile. There's been trauma dumping going on in the forums which is difficult enough for an international group of adults, but when it happens in the children's space and kids are feeling the pressure of supporting other people, particularly their friends through significant mental health issues, something is going wrong. When users of a forum can't rely on the people there to protect them, even when it's from each other, there is a major problem. Some of the issues have been so significant that they have required reporting to law enforcement and that's a really sticky situation, because of the international nature of the group.
I don't think anyone ever imagined, back in 1999 that we would reach a peak of 400,000 people (I think that was during COVID) and still be around 350,000 people today. Well, we were before these issues became so universally known. The impact of that change and the global reach of the website have made this project a lot more complicated than could have been anticipated back then, and another accusation that has been banded about over the last few years particularly, is that the projects are still very much America-centric. For a number of us, that is categorically true. Participation is possible, but different for international people. When I flew to America in 2018 because of NaNoWriMo I was one of two people who had flown over and the other lady was from Germany. Everyone else was from somewhere in America (except for one of the staff who was from Canada). Now I know that's a least in part because it was an utter privilege to be able to do it, but at the same time, it's the biggest event of NaNoWriMo and there wasn't really anything like virtual participation. I'm not sure what the answer is for something like that, but being focused mostly on America is a problem, particularly when it comes to fundraising.
One of the big reasons that this is so bad is because NaNo has been hanging on by a thread for a long time. Things that were planned upgrades for the sites weren't able to happen because there was just no budget. The organisation does have sponsors, but the majority of the operating budget is from donations and those donations have a long way to stretch. They fund the websites, the forums, the staff, the packs sent to schools which support YWP as well as the gifts given to MLs (regional leads) to say thank you for their support, as well as the stickers that are sent to regions with MLs for participants. There are designers to pay, tech support and so much more. Anything which affects public opinion of the organisation, like the accusations that have been made, always impacts the financial contributions that are received by the organisation and the capacity to recover from that is going to be stretched because there wasn't a lot of buffer anyway.
The worse part, even than the money because we have worked with less, is that the trust in the organisation could be shattered beyond repair. If things aren't resolved for the YWP, those young people might be lost from the organisation for good, and if adults manage to replace what the organisation gives them with something else, then the entire community that has been built could be slashed to bits, and actually it looks like it is happening, or it is very close to happening.
Having been part of this since I was 16, I know how important the organisation has always been to me, but I also know that keeping it is not an at all costs thing, and that has only really come about because of the fact that losing it has been a very real possibility in the last few weeks. Without it being the safe space that it should be for everyone, it doesn't have anything like the same value. We're working with the forums shut down and honestly it's fragmented the community more than destroyed it, but I guess that's a kind of destruction.
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