I stopped updating my NaNoWriMo count in the middle of November. This wasn’t me falling off the wagon of writing words, although my pace was no where near 1,667 a day. That was me learning about accusations about NaNoWriMo’s Young Writer’s Program (YWP) having been used to groom children. While I continued writing, I stopped updating on the NaNoWriMo site to process my gut reaction and watch how NaNoWriMo’s board of directors reacted.
Their response has not impressed me. (Sadly you cannot see these threads unless you log into their forums and screen capping a 4000 plus comment thread isn’t feasible.) Their latest comment about shutting down the boards to retool them (while never mentioning the accusation) is posted in such a way that I can’t link to it directly was a final straw.
While I wasn’t active on the boards, I did donate to the organization. Given the recent events, I will no longer support NaNoWriMo in the foreseeable future. I am not sure what I will do next November. I used NaNo as a push to get a manuscript done with a social aspect of sorts. I will figure out another way to do so.
Oh wow. I did Nano several years, though not the last couple, and that’s awful to hear. It was always nice to feel like part of a community while writing, but that’s awful to think that the young writer’s program was abused that way.