By: A.B. Timothy

I, an author in my early twenties, like many my age, wrote my first complete novel with a beginning, middle, and end in the trenches of NaNoWriMo. This event and the organization that sprang up around it also got me involved in my first real writing group in my hometown, and then in my second real writing group online.

For those unfamiliar, NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month. The original idea behind it was that local writing groups would set aside the month of November to fire on all cylinders and write 50k words in a month.

It was with great sorrow, I heard of the downfall of the organization around the event. I have been well-informed of the many facets of their downfall, and it makes it even harder to bear. I myself participated in my first NaNoWriMo before I was 18, and to think I could have been targeted (I don’t believe I was, thank goodness), disturbs me.

Then, with the final nail in the coffin of accepting NaNoWriMo submissions written by AI, I knew the organization had to go, but I was not ready to see the idea falter. Thus, I have been pursuing my novel with a similar intensity this month as I have been known to pursue other novels in previous years, during this same month.

I remember my first successful NaNo project was a Sci-Fi Novel I wrote 5 years ago. I was firing on all cylinders for the first week of that project. Now, 5 years later, I just finished a re-outline of that story last month and will be pursuing it sometime late ’26 and into ’27.

Now that NaNoWriMo is no more, many have stood to take its place, but none have been as inspired as the original. I don’t know if I will ever officially participate in this kind of event again, but I hope something crops up to inspire the writers following after me as much as NaNoWriMo inspired me.