I was shocked (but not entirely shocked) during my social media browsing this morning to read NaNoWriMo’s recent statements about the use of AI in writing for the various competitions they sponsor. To say their statement has caused an uproar in the online writing communities I visit would be a severe understatement. This, following the failures on NaNoWriMo’s part to keep children safe from sexual predators is just the cap on a string of unforced errors on the non-profit’s part.
If you’re unfamiliar with NaNoWriMo, the acronym(?) is short for “National Novel Writing Month”. It started off as a yearly voluntary competition to write 50,000 words of a new novel during the month of November. Thousands of people would participate, and those who completed the 50K words before the end of the month would be declared winners, though really there are no losers amongst those willing to give creative writing a try. Over the years, they’ve branched out to sponsor other competitions, with a focus on encouraging younger folk to find enjoyment in writing. NaNoWriMo was not founded to help aspiring writers to become published authors. Instead it was intended to help aspiring writers to develop discipline and to lock the internal editor away for a span of days. I’ve participated many times over it’s nearly 25 years, and have benefited from it greatly.
But last year’s allegations about the Board of NaNoWriMo actively protecting a member who was sexually preying on underaged writers in the forums at the beginning of the competition in 2023 was a serious blow to my appreciation for the organization who had been sponsoring the competitions. I’m not going to rehash the allegations and the actions (and inactions) the board took in response. You can find them documented all over the web. Here is one such recounting.
But the stance the Board has taken regarding Generative AI is just one scandal too many. Today I deleted my 20+ year account there and will no longer be recommending NaNoWriMo to aspiring writers.
It’s bad enough that they are encouraging people to use Generative AI to write their stories, and in theory, submit them for the contest. The contest was always about developing the practice to write nearly 2000 words each and every day of the month of November, and balancing that quota against holiday obligations for the vast majority of American participants (American Thanksgiving occurs near the end of the month). Their statement seems to endorse submitting a writing prompt to a tool like ChatGPT and asking it to write the 50,000 words for the contest in seconds. It belies the entire purpose of the competition.
But then they had to go and label those who oppose Generative AI as “classist” and “ableist”, two hot buzz-words in the social justice movement. And I believe they are using these labels very incorrectly. They seem to imply that neurodivergent and disabled people need these tools to compete with abled and neurotypical people in order to create art. But what I’m hearing from disabled and neurodivergent authors on BlueSky and Facebook is that while they benefit from Assistive AI tools like grammar checkers and spellcheckers, they don’t need Generative AI. And since there have been disabled and neurodivergent people throughout history who have produced wonderful art, I am convinced by their argument. In fact, NaNoWriMo’s position comes across as belittling, as if they are saying that disabled and neurodivergent people cannot be creative without these tools. That in and of itself seems ableist and condescending.
Learning to write and write well, like any art form, takes hard work. It takes practice. NaNoWriMo had a place in helping people take those first hard steps. It encouraged people to write poorly as long as they were writing. Without practice, one cannot hone their craft, and NaNoWriMo was the purest form of practice, writing to a deadline and chucking the inner editor into the closet for a month. They never made any allusion to a promise that at the end of the month, all of the “novels” that were written would be publishable. No, they were very clear that the point of the endeavor was simply to practice writing to a schedule, or failing a schedule, to a deadline. Writing without editing was the whole point.
But something has changed over at NaNoWriMo headquarters. They have seemingly changed their focus from helping aspiring writers to develop a writing practice and now seemingly are focused on making sure every participant has a chance at becoming a successful writer, presumably by being picked up by a publisher or self-publishing. And they seem to feel that Generative AI is one tool that can be used to accomplish this.
But really, the Kindle marketplace (along with all of the other self-publishing sites) are already chock-a-block full of AI-generated garbage, with “authors” trying to make a quick buck. It’s the “TechBros” mantra of making success in writing (or painting/illustration) accessible to the masses, which is encouraging people who can’t be bothered to put in the time practicing to believe they can become instantly successful. Even if Generative AI was not immensely costly in terms of energy and resource depletion, the output is at best mediocre. And it’s also ethically irresponsible because it requires terabytes of training material, much of which is copyrighted and being used without compensation to the authors (or artists). In fact the CEOs of some of the Generative AI companies have testified that they could not make these models possible if they had to fairly compensate the people whose work is being used to train their machines. So, there are many many reasons not to be promoting Generative AI as a part of a creative writing competition, and many reasons why anyone who wants to become an actually successful writer should avoid using them to write their books.
Now full disclosure is warranted here. I do use Generative AI in the development of my stories, both short stories and novels. I use them to help brainstorm ideas, to help me develop my characters and to get feedback on plot ideas. I even use it to get feedback on scenes I’ve written, and the feedback it gives has been valuable (often it reminds me to use more description, to give more insight into the characters’ feelings and not just have them dialog, and to make sure to keep character voice in mind so it doesn’t all read like the same character is taking both sides of a discussion). It’s no different, in my mind, than the feedback that a first pass from members of a critiquing group provides. Oh, and of course I ask it for help with grammar and spelling/word choice. I can never remember when I should use “who’s” and “whose”.
But the words that appear in the manuscript? All mine.
To me, this is an ethical position. You may disagree. I hear the arguments about how Generative AI uses too much power and too many natural resources, and while I have trouble believing some of the estimates of natural resource usage–I have a hard time, knowing what I know about computing devices and the needs of data centers, believing that a simple query drains an entire pond and consumes it somehow–I know that in the long run the current computational cost is unsustainable. Knowing Moore’s law, I do believe those costs will come down quickly, but that’s only my opinion. The resource arguments, though, are definitely worth considering and paying attention to, I agree.
Anyway, I’m saddened that NaNoWriMo has made this decision to endorse using Generative AI in their competitions. I’ve enjoyed participating in the contests, have several “Winner” t-shirts in my closet, and several posters. I’ve donated to the foundation that powers it and powers the charitable work they do fostering writing in schools and such. But I now feel betrayed by the current board members. I know I was not the only person to delete my account from their servers today, and I know I’m not the only person pledging to donate to other causes in the future. I doubt I’d go back if they changed this stance, too much damage has been done (did I mention the child sexual predation they allegedly spent six months desperately trying to cover up?).
RIP NaNoWriMo.
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