November is coming, but there will be no NaNoWriMo…

You may know that this was the annual exercise in which people attempted to write an entire novel (well, 50,000 words, a bit skimpy actually) in a single month. You could register your progress, meet up with fellow writers and so on.

There was always something a little strange about this. It seemed designed for people who didn’t really enjoy writing, but wanted to get it off their bucket list once and for all. Arguably it encouraged bad writing because quality was not important, just quantity. And while it was meant to be encouraging, most people always failed.

Apparently there had been several problems. There were claims that its forums were misused, though the organisers were quick to act. It weirdly decided to allow the use of AI, which most people thought rendered the exercise pointless (it even claimed that denying AI to participants was ableist). Somehow it ran out of money.

My feelings are ambivalent, but they include a big element of regret. I entered (and succeeded) in 2008 with a story about, what else, someone entering NaNoWriMo. I polished the result up afterwards, but it’s still medium bad with a few good lines. Probably my biggest mistake was to make my hero, the narrator, pretentious and verbose. Humorously, but still.

Nevertheless, in a spirit of commemoration and for what it’s worth, here it is.