Is this the End of NaNoWriMo?

Most of you will be familiar with National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo, as it’s commonly known.

Image Courtesy of NaNoWriMo

Like me, you may have used it as the discipline needed to get 50,000 words down on paper during the 30 days of November. Perhaps you logged your growing word count via the organisation’s website and participated in encouraging chats on its forums. I went to an in-person NaNoWriMo event in Birmingham one year, wrote an article about it for Writing Magazine and I’ve blogged about it several times. 

But, according to this article in the Guardian, it seems that NaNoWriMo as an organisation has had to close due to financial problems compounded by reputational damage. The reputational damage relates to the behaviour of one of its forum moderators and to a statement made by the organisation about AI. More information can also be found on the Euronews website.

To me this is sad news because several of my novels started life as scrappy NaNoWriMo manuscripts and in the months after NaNo were honed to ‘perfection’.

So what happens next? Will you still use November to get those words written? Does it matter if there’s no formal organisation?