My List of Demands for NaNoWriMo

 Dear NaNoWriMo.org--

I'd already planned to skip National Novel Writing Month this year, in part so I can devote my time to getting a novel (a novel rooted in my first NaNo win, in fact) formatted for EPUB and prepped for public release, but mostly because I don't have any ideas particularly burning to get out. My brain is focused on the Christophina saga, and I have no new volumes that I want to work on just yet.

When you chucked several marginalized groups under a bus to keep people from criticizing you about your stance on generative AI, I decided that even if I did do National Novel Writing Month, I would not do it on the official site--I would use TrackBear to graph my wordcount and find a Discord server where people were doing it unofficially. However, I did not delete my account, as many have, because I still hold out hope that the event can be recovered. What does recovery look like to me? Three things:

1. Get rid of Kilby Blades. This is non-negotiable. She has done more damage to NaNoWriMo than the entire grooming scandal.  It is a pretty safe bet that the posting about AI that stirred everybody up in the first place is her authorship. Even if not, under her incompetent leadership the communications from NaNo HQ have been markedly defensive and passive-aggressive in a way that matches her interactions with others all the way back to the closing of the forums. This is no way to run an organization like this. Her decisions have been insultingly lazy. The forums remain closed, even though they've had nearly a year to fix the issues in question. Instead of getting Municipal Liaisons onboarded under the new standards, she fired every single one of them. They had some issues with the merch that they sell to raise funds for the organization, and instead of doing the complicated but necessary work to fix these problems, they're just not selling merch, apparently. People who raise questions about these issues on the official social media accounts are banned from posting on those accounts instead of being given any answers. By dropping MLs and merchandise, Kilby is cutting off crucial sources of financial support for the organization, making it uncertain if there will even be an official National Novel Writing Month next year. Getting rid of her is the first step in fixing all that she's broken.

2. Bring back the forums. And while you're at it, get it off of Discourse and onto a better forum platform. Even if you just go back to what you had before, it would be an improvement. (Let's face it, the only wrimo who liked Discourse was Moderator X, because it gave her leverage for you to put up with her since she was about the only person who knew how to operate the backend on it.) Even if not everybody used the forums, and even if Kilby thinks they're unnecessary, they were a big part of the NaNoWriMo experience. It was a place for wrimos to connect with one another, swap wordcount strategies, post little excerpts for people to read, and generally share enthusiasm for this audacious thing they all set out to do. Running a NaNoWriMo--the 25th anniversary!--without forums will leave wrimos without the support from others that makes makes writing a novel a much easier endeavor. Any newbies who venture to try it this year (assuming they haven't been scared off from it) are going to have a much more difficult time of it than they would if they could connect with other wrimos.

3. Speaking of connecting with other wrimos, bring back the Regions. Oh, yes, I suppose you still technically have them on your site, but if you don't have MLs, you don't really have Regions. The handling of the new standards for MLs has been an absolute catastrophe. I have never been an ML, but I do know that about as soon as the new agreement came out, the MLs from the Atlanta Region quit, took the Discourse they'd set up, and went home. Word has gotten out about what was in that agreement, and the fact that it seemed to be written primarily to shield the organization from any liability whatsoever, and place that liability on the shoulders of the MLs. Many of them walked on that alone and reportedly the ones that didn't got dropped anyway. MLs are essential to the functioning of National Novel Writing Month. Not only do they organize in-person meetups for wrimos to gather and write together, they also help fundraise to make sure there will be many NaNos to come. Fundraising competitions between Regions drove up donations in a fun way that I'm sure helped the organization. Just setting up a calendar for "unofficial" write-ins won't do the same thing.

When these three problems are fixed, I will consider using my account for NaNoWriMo again. In the meantime, I'll be logging in periodically to make copies of all the information for my past projects, just in case the place goes under. Because I'm not really sure that it won't.