Latest news with #KilbyBlades
Yahoo
03-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
NaNoWriMo closes: How scandals rocked a novel writing community
This week, NaNoWriMo announced that it was officially shutting down. National Novel Writing Month, shortened to 'NaNoWriMo', was a US non-profit organisation that encouraged people to try and write a 50,000-word novel every November. NaNoWriMo director Kilby Blades announced the closure of the company via a 27-minute YouTube video posted yesterday. She explained that it was the result of financial issues with the company and the various reputation-damaging controversies. Related French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal given five year prison sentence Women's Prize for Non-Fiction 2025: Neneh Cherry, Yuan Yang, and Rachel Clarke in shortlist Started in 1999 with just 21 participants, NaNoWriMo grew in popularity as people tried to collectively keep up with its daily word-count writing goals. In 2006 it became a non-profit company and for its 2022 edition, 413,295 participated. Based around using the dreary weather of November as an excuse for wannabe writers to sit down and finally pen their novel, NaNoWriMo has participants write an average of 1,667 words a day. It didn't need to be high-quality writing, you just had to meet the word count. If you did, by the end of November you'd have a 50,000-word draft in your hands. Then, hopefully you'd also have the mettle to turn that into something more polished. As the community grew, so did the organisation's goals. NaNoWriMo created a young writers programme, an in-person writing camp, and paperback copies of finished scripts. It even boasted the genesis of some successful novels such as Sara Gruen's "Water for Elephants". But alongside the successes, trouble also brewed. A huge number of its users dropped the organisation in 2023 when it faced scandal as multiple users complained NaNoWriMo hadn't acted to remove a moderator accused of grooming children on another site. This wasn't helped by many writers already choosing to shun the organisation over their recent stance on AI, claiming it could be a helpful tool in creative writing. Defending their pro-AI stance, NaNoWriMo argued that 'not all brains have same abilities', an argument many found ableist and patronising. Due to these scandals, it became increasingly difficult to run the finances of the non-profit. "We recognize that the closure of NaNoWriMo represents a huge loss to the writing community, and that grief over this outcome will be exacerbated by the challenges of the past sixteen months,' Blades explained. 'This is not the ending that anybody wanted or planned. And – believe us – if we could hit the delete button and rewrite this last chapter, we would. But we do have hope for the epilogue.' Although this is the formal end of NaNoWriMo, its goal of getting people to use November as a chance to write is still available for anyone who wants to give it a try.
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
NaNoWriMo Goes Bankrupt After Embracing AI
A quarter century after its inception — and less than a year after its "full-throated" defense of artificial intelligence in writing — the nonprofit behind the annual National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) challenge is closing its doors. Kilby Blades, a romance author serving as NaNoWriMo's interim executive director, announced in a video and in emails posted to social media that the nonprofit, which challenged participants to crank out a draft for a novel every November, would be shuttering because, essentially, it's out of money. In the nearly 30-minute-long video, Blades explained in detail the money problems that the competition — which spawned the bestselling "Water For Elephants" and incorporated into a nonprofit six years ago — has suffered, which sound both stark and legitimate. Though the interim director did address prior allegations of abuse and grooming regarding the nonprofit's forums, she failed to mention the most recent elephant in the room: that last year, the group changed its policies to allow those who participated in its annual creative writing challenge to use AI generators. Beyond just allowing the use of AI, NaNoWriMo also claimed that merely criticizing the technology — which has put untold numbers of writers and other workers out of a job, threatens to do so with many more, and goes against the challenge's founding ethos of inspiring people to do the work of writing — is tantamount to ableism. "We believe that to categorically condemn AI would be to ignore classist and ableist issues surrounding the use of the technology," the nonprofit's 2024 statement reads, "and that questions around the use of AI tie to questions around privilege." Unsurprisingly, that messaging attracted immense criticism. In the wake of its release, professionals who had been affiliated with the decades-spanning competition publicly denounced it. "Never use my name in your promo again," tweeted Daniel José Older, a New York Times bestselling young adult author and former NaNoWriMo board member, last September. "In fact never say my name at all and never email me again. Thanks." Maureen Johnson, another ex-board member and YA author, warned fellow writers on her way out the door about what the AI decision could mean. "I would also encourage writers to beware," Johnson wrote in an Instagram post, "your work on [NaNoWriMo's] platform is almost certainly going to be used to train AI." In the wake of the closure news, the usual usual suspects pointed to the grooming allegations leveled at NaNoWriMo — accusations that were, it's worth noting, thoroughly investigated and handled by the nonprofit. Literary types, however, saw the AI writing on the wall. "So many people worked so hard to make NaNoWriMo what it was," children and YA author Maggie Tokuda-Hall posted on Bluesky, "and it was all squandered to prop up a plagiarism machine, truly betraying everything NaNo represented: the limitless creativity of normal people." "NaNoWriMo belongs to the writers, not some shit traitorous organization," another user declared. "Always has, always will." Indeed, for all that it became in its final years, NaNoWriMo was once a staple in the creative writing blogosphere and a way for those who didn't attend the Iowa Writers' Workshop to make names for themselves. Pedigree was never a factor for the challenge's winners, who all won upon writing at least 50,000 words during the month of November and who were only required to register for verification purposes. Obviously, the organization got mighty lost along the way, but it's still sad to see NaNoWriMo go — and it feels like a harbinger of things to come. More on AI writing: LA Times Uses AI to Provide "Different Views" on the KKK
The Guardian
02-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Scandal-hit creative writing website NaNoWriMo to close after 20 years
NaNoWriMo, the US-based nonprofit organisation that challenged people to write a novel in a month, has announced it is closing down after 20 years. NaNoWriMo – an abbreviation of National Novel Writing Month – fostered an online community of participants aiming to write 50,000 words of fiction in November. It began informally in 1999 before becoming a nonprofit in 2006. Each year, tens of thousands signed up to the organisation's flagship programme. On Monday, NaNoWriMo announced its closure to community members via email. A 27-minute YouTube video posted the same day by the organisation's interim executive director Kilby Blades explained that it had to close due to ongoing financial problems, which were compounded by reputational damage. In November 2023, several community members complained to the nonprofit's board, Blades said. They believed that staff had mishandled accusations made in May 2023 that a NaNoWriMo forum moderator was grooming children on a different website. The moderator was eventually removed, though this was for unrelated code of conduct violations and occurred 'many weeks' after the initial complaints. In the wake of this, community members came forward with other complaints related to child safety on the NaNoWriMo sites. The organisation was also widely criticised last year over a statement on the use of artificial intelligence in creative writing. After stating that it did not support or explicitly condemn any approach to writing, including the use of AI, it said that the 'categorical condemnation of artificial intelligence has classist and ableist undertones'. It went on to say that 'not all writers have the financial ability to hire humans to help at certain phases of their writing', and that 'not all brains have same abilities … There is a wealth of reasons why individuals can't 'see' the issues in their writing without help.' Fantasy author CL Polk said at the time that 'NaNo is basically asserting that disabled people don't have what it takes to create art when they trot out the lie that scorning AI is ableist'. Though the AI controversy received widespread press coverage, Blades' video primarily focused on the child safety concerns. She said that NaNoWriMo's position on AI had been covered 'frankly so inaccurately'. Sign up to Bookmarks Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you after newsletter promotion The organisation's closure 'will cause no small amount of grief', said Blades. NaNoWriMo will keep its websites live for 'as long as possible' so that 'people can take what they want from their accounts', but did not specify a date when the sites would shut down. 'We hold no belief that people will stop writing 50,000 words in November,' read Monday's email. 'Many alternatives to NaNoWriMo popped up this year, and people did find each other. In so many ways, it's easier than it was when NaNoWriMo began in 1999 to find your writing tribe online.'
