I see that everyone on the internet is wrong about #NaNoWriMo again

For 10+ years, I've found the concept of #NaNoWriMo cringe--and the critical discourse around it about 1000 times cringier. The latest scandal is no exception.

Those of you who keep up with publishing news are no doubt aware of the latest scandal plaguing NaNoWriMo, a.k.a. National Novel Writing Month.

Earlier this week—in their community FAQs, LOL—NaNoWriMo declared it was officially cool if participating authors used artificial intelligence in their creative process.

This caused Publishing Twitter to explode. Several authors publicly resigned from NaNoWriMo’s boards and programming; at least one of the organization’s sponsors severed ties; many prominent authors tweeted their outrage. How could an organization ostensibly devoted to helping authors endorse cheating this way?!

The discourse has now leapt from Twitter (I will never call it X) to the usual thinkpiece venues.

I have my own strong—and salty—opinions about this, and I’m afraid they’re mostly about the critics.

It’s not that I’m pro-cheating or pro-the devaluation of human creativity. (That would be rather self sabotaging of me, wouldn’t it?)

I’m more just profoundly embarrassed for us all. For many years now, I’ve been more annoyed by the behavior NaNoWriMo effects in its haters than by the organization per se, and that’s saying a lot, because the organization has annoyed the shit out of me for a long time. I see this as the latest and most salient example of why.

The discourse is stupid. It’s stupid. In order to yell our anxieties at each other as fast and forcefully as possible, we’re all completely overlooking the real perils (and potential, and limits) of AI and human beings in book publishing. We’re overlooking the real economic challenges facing commercial authors now and in the future. We’re confusing each other as to what constitutes “ableism” in creative enterprise. And in the process, we’re dumping entire trash trucks of bad writing onto a world that’s already got millions of landfills’ worth and really doesn’t need any more.

UGH.

I’ll go into detail on all of this in a moment, but first, for those of you scratching your heads right now:

What is NaNoWriMo?