I joined NaNoWriMo in 2012. I wrote eight novels inspired by NaNoWriMo. Four times, I reached the goal of writing 50,000 words in a month. Today, I deleted my NaNoWriMo account.
Why?
When I joined NaNoWriMo, it was to connect with writers around the world. It didn’t matter to me what they wrote or how they wrote it. What mattered was that we were all in this together. It was the cameraderie that drew me in and kept me updating my profile and creating a new project every year (except for one).
Recently, NaNoWriMo has shown itself not to be the organisation I joined. They’ve taken sides in an incredibly complicated conflict, showing themselves to be swayed by popular belief and unable to comprehend even the existence of another side. Rather than bringing writers together under the common theme of writing, they’ve pushed them apart by taking a stance in a conflict they clearly don’t understand.
I didn’t leave on a whim or in a bout of fury. I wrote to them and received an unsatisfactory response. Then I waited for three weeks before making the final decision. I’m sorry to leave, but I think it was the right thing for me to do. I would never encourage anyone else to do the same.
I will continue to write. I will probably continue to write novels in November, spurred on by my local writer friends; I’m not leaving our Facebook group. And I discovered a wonderful video that explains how to create NaNo-type, word-count graphs.
Bye bye, NaNoWriMo. We had great times together. I’m so sad it’s over.
Miriam Drori, Author 
6 replies on “The End of an Era”
Reblogged this on NEW OPENED BLOG > https:/BOOKS.ESLARN-NET.DE.
Good luck in your new endeavors Miriam, It was a pleasure sharing a project with you.
Elizabeth
Thank you, Elizabeth. I wish you lots of luck, too.
I’ve read their statement and I’m leaving too. It’s dreadful.
Your support is heartwarming, although I want to stress that I’m not asking anyone else to leave.
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