NaNoWriMo showed me I could knuckle down and write a book – and though it’s closing, I hope the idea behind it lives on

It seems budding writers can make alternative plans for this coming November. Maybe take a holiday, learn to juggle, work on their chess openings … or anything, anything, that doesn’t involve writing an entire novel in a month.

I am, of course, referring to the sad news that the online writing community NaNoWriMo is calling it a day after more than 20 years in existence. The organisation, which has existed officially as a nonprofit since 2006, has been a source of inspiration to many amateur (and professional) writers who’ve needed the requisite kick up the bum to actually get stuff down on the page. Because although NaNoWriMo – short for National Novel Writing Month – existed all year round as a support group for writers, it was known chiefly for its November writing marathon – could you write 50,000 words in that month alone? Or, to put it another way, could you average 1,667 words a day over a 30-day period? Or, to put it another way, were you willing to go stark-raving crackers for a month?

I was once willing. Back in 2021, without any preplanning whatsoever, I tried to bash out my own bestselling novel in a month, and wrote about it for the Guardian. It was a revealing experience – the only way to really hit the deadline was to write without ever looking back, without editing, without even reading what had gone before. The result was both a success and a failure. A success because I did indeed manage 50,000 words. Not only that, but I staggered on for another fortnight until my tome had an ending and clocked in at a whopping 69,803 words. That’s no mean feat for six weeks’ work! Even if I did have to write some of it while having a pint of blood removed at the Macmillan cancer centre in order to hit the deadline.

So why was it a failure? Well, largely because the resulting novel was bobbins. It seemed destined to be bobbins before I started writing it. It felt like utter bobbins while I was writing it. And then, when I read it back and reviewed it a year later, its status as complete and utter nonsense-level bobbins was confirmed.

A friend of mine insists that the whole thing ruined my confidence in writing fiction, and I do like the idea that if it wasn’t for taking on this near-impossible challenge I would currently be swanning around the London literary circuit with a couple of Booker prizes hanging out of my back pocket. But the truth is that NaNoWriMo had little effect on me either way. If someone ever asks me if I have ever written a novel, I instinctively say no, before remembering that actually, technically, I have. It just doesn’t really feel like it. It isn’t something that I consider a proper novel. In fact, I’ve just had a horrible vision of my kids discovering the book after I’ve died and reading through it, thinking, “ah man, Dad really was deluded, wasn’t he?”. Or worse – trying to honour me by getting it published. Must burn it tonight.

NaNoWriMo did prove that I could knuckle down and do the grunt work if necessary, which is perhaps a nice thing to have in the back of your mind. But it didn’t make me into a writer. I didn’t have a good enough idea of what I wanted to say – and without the 1% inspiration, the 99% perspiration doesn’t really amount to much.

But different people write in very different ways and I can see how, for a writer with a plan and a voice raring to go, NaNoWriMo could have been a gamechanger. The fact that it is having to shut down, in a world where the arts are under attack from the far right and artificial intelligence, is pretty depressing.

Despite its popularity, it seems that NaNoWriMo had been struggling for a while with financial problems. These were exacerbated by various controversies: an equivocating stance on AI and an alleged failure to investigate a serious accusation against a moderator among them. To me, the project seems rather like parkrun, someone’s sweet idea that became unimaginably big (over 400,000 participants were reported to have taken in 2022, up from 21 in its first year). Suddenly there are all these unanticipated problems and voices to deal with and the original spirit needed a serious structure behind it to continue thriving. Parkrun has risen to the challenge but NaNoWriMo evidently struggled.

But if the organisation is no more, there’s no need for the idea itself to die. The internet is a very different place to what it was in 1999, and no doubt there will be people well placed to step into the gap it leaves, either by continuing the original idea (as Bluesky did with X) or reshaping it as something similar but different. Maybe even better.

So perhaps budding writers will still be cranking out 50,000 words this November after all. Not me, though. I’ll be doing something much more beneficial for the world of literature, like working on my Nimzowitsch defence.