NaNoWriMo 2023 wrap up: what I worked on, discussing controversy, and moving forward

Video version of this blog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHhqPqGbSeU

Starting off, my original goal was to spend the entire month working on book two in my current trilogy which you can learn more about that and my publication process in my recent video which you can find here:.

But I unfortunately didn’t meet that goal. I did reach 50k, but I reached it while writing other miscellaneous short stories and work-related projects that had to be prioritized. I did however get about 25k in for book 2 so I at least reached half of that goal. I was hoping to get my book finished by November, then do some editing and get beta drafts out by December which obviously won’t be happening, but I’m setting a new goal to finish the book by December or January and get beta drafts out next spring.

Some of the things I wrote for NaNoWriMo were as follows:

One, a short crime/mystery story that takes place in the 1920s which I submitted to a literary magazine which I got accepted to! I’ll let you guys know as soon as it’s publish so ya’ll can read it if you’d like.

Two, I worked on a bunch of blogs and scripts for my social accounts that cover things like my publication process and other various book/writing-related stuff.

Three, I wrote up a bunch of feedback for a book I beta-read.

Four, I just wrote a bunch of miscellaneous outlines and notes for my current series.

And of course, the 25k that went to book 2

This was my seventh NaNoWriMo and I can say for sure that I haven’t struggled this much since my first NaNoWriMo.

But back when I first started, I struggled because I wasn’t used to writing so much every day. Now, I’m very used to it so that wasn’t the issue. I can finish my word count in like an hour or so if I want to. But my problem was that I was doing a million other things this month on top of Nanowrimo. All of which were related to work, school, and personal projects, so I really struggled to finish on time because I had so many other responsibilities I had to take care of.

But I managed to get it all done and I need a fucking vacation.

Now I’m going to talk a little about some of the controversy surrounding NaNoWriMo. I’m late to addressing this but I knew I had to say something since I’m super active in this program and participate every year so I feel like it would be wrong to just ignore this.

Long story short, there was an issue with one of the moderators on the NaNoWriMo forums involving some minors. I won’t be going into great detail here since I don’t understand the situation 100% and I also don’t want to speak for the victims or anyone involved, so you can do your own research on that. But what happened was really bad and a lot of people are leaving NaNoWriMo because of it. I haven’t left the site because I just don’t know enough about the situation to really make that kind of decision, and also because it seems to be an issue with the forums specifically rather than an issue with the whole organization. To my knowledge at least. If anything I say is incorrect and you want to add to all this, then go ahead. But it did involve some minors being lured off the site and getting groomed I believe, and nothing really got done about it so eventually the board of directors had to jump in.

So it wasn’t 100% isolated to the forums, but this didn’t seem to be an issue in any other part of NaNoWriMo or sub communities within the organization.

This sorta surprises me because of how loving and kind this organization has been throughout the years, so hearing that something to this degree happened had me gobsmacked. But at the same time, all this doesn’t surprise me for multiple reasons. The first being that any space where adults and minors coexist usually goes to shit, especially if things aren’t heavily moderated. And the second being that the forums have always been a really terrible and toxic space compared to the rest of NaNoWriMo. Their write ins, groups, and activities have always been filled with nothing but positivity and amazing staff members, at least in my experience, while the forums were filled with a bunch of bigots and creeps who harassed and bullied people. Especially children. And moderators who didn’t always do their jobs. Partly because they were understaffed and partly because some just didn’t care I think. A lot of them, at least when I was on the forums years ago, were very rude and unprofessional.

I got bullied by adults there lots of times, saw some insanely bigoted and immoral stuff posted, and saw mods curse out members in public comments or acknowledge issues but refuse to do anything about it.

Just super unprofessional and not a safe space.

There was this one time, after I had a conversation with someone about being asexual, a 50 something year old came in and told me that I wasn’t asexual, that it was a phase, and that she went to my account to check my age (I was 16) and told me that once I became an adult I would enjoy porn. The reason I “thought” I was asexual was because I was simply too young to understand sexual attraction and would eventually find the pleasure. Which is just a fucked up thing to say for many reasons. Especially to a minor.

Yet no moderators bothered to stop this person or the dozens of other adults attacking and insulting me in the comments of that post. One moderator did acknowledge what was happening and just left a comment telling us to be civil before going offline and leaving me to deal with these people.

This doesn’t mean that every member and moderator on the forums is a piece of shit since I’ve met some wonderful people on there including one of my editors. A lot of folks there are amazing if you’re lucky enough to meet them. But there are unfortunately a lot of bad apples. And I don’t want to sound hypocritical because I remember being a kid on that forum way back when I was like 13 or 14 and saying some really dumb, uneducated shit because I was a stupid child who didn’t understand much about the world and had weird mindsets on stuff because I grew up in a bad home. But I never attacked anyone or said anything to that degree. Even as a child I knew better than that. And what’s everyone else’s excuse? Half of the people that bullied and harassed me and others were grown ass adults. Half of them being like 40 and up. Not some edgy, uneducated teenager who didn’t know how to word stuff properly. It would be easier to excuse some of the weird behaviors of the people there if they were kids, and just didn’t know a lot about the world, but a lot of them are adults who know better. And even as a kid I would never cross the lines being crossed there. I had grown adult tell me to give up on writing, and that my books are probably trash, and I saw this one older user make a post basically insulting all of the minors on the forums and it was just one long rant about why they hated kids and thought we were so terrible to their elders.

There was also this one mod who, instead of deleting the comments of a person who was acting inappropriate, decided to jump into the argument and go back and forth with them and swear at them. Like that is not how you handle a situation.

Not to mention that if you were a minority there, you would a lot of times get your voice stepped on by people who had no right to be in the conversation and who thought they knew more than you.

I tried my best to speak about my experiences as a minority and make things right, but I was too young and uneducated to really make a difference, and in some instances, I feel like I just made things worse. So I want to take a moment of appreciation for those who took time to actually make a difference on that site and also educate me so I could better understand the conversations I was trying to add on to. And I’m thankful to younger me for listening. I wish others on the site put in the effort to listen to the voices trying to educate them instead of pushing them away or flat out refusing to listen.

But the fact fact that this behavior was coming from adults is very very sad. Not that that behavior would be any better if it came from a minor, but minors typically have more time to change and grow. Adults do too of course, but it’s scarier to see this behavior come from people old enough to know better.

I haven’t been on the forum much recently because of all of that and don’t plan on returning there any time soon. But like I said earlier, the other parts of NaNoWriMo like their group activities, write ins, and live streams are awesome, half of which aren’t even hosting my nano staff. There are a lot of Nano groups with awesome people that are completely separate from the website and choose to do their own things. I’ve literally never had an issue with anyone in NaNoWriMo outside of the forums. I’m pretty sure the forums are just some sort of watering hole for weird people and heavily undermoderated by folks who don’t even care that much which is why all this shit has happened and gotten worse. I’m glad the board of directors stepped in and I’m glad new methods are being placed to try and better protect the users there, but this shouldn’t have even happened to begin with and I can understand why people are wary of Nanowrimo now.

What I will say is please do not harass anyone over this. What happened was bad but I’ve been seeing a lot of people boycotting Namowrimo and shit talking people who either work there or participate. Although I understand the anger and can’t stop you from leaving which is a valid decision, talking down on workers and participants who not only had nothing to do with it but also had no idea this was even going on isn’t right either. I’m not here to tell you whether or not you should stay or leave NaNoWriMo, or what kind of opinion you should make for them, but I am here to say that what happened was wrong, it makes me very sad, especially as someone who went through stuff of similar nature, but I also don’t want to see innocent people get dragged down with it. Nor do I want this writing experience to be soured because of horrible people. Which obviously can’t be helped. I think it soured this experience for a lot of members. But like I said, there are groups within NaNoWriMo that are separate from the organization who are super amazing and you don’t even have to join the website to do the challenge. You can just write 50k on your own. So I hope we can all still have some positive time with our writing partners and projects. That doesn’t mean we should ignore the situation. We should always hold the people involved accountable, and continue to make people aware and educated, as well as put in the effort to protect others so this hopefully doesn’t happen again. But I understand that we all have things to do and lives to tend to and I hope we were all still able to have somewhat of a good time with our projects last month and continue to enjoy our time with them in these upcoming months.

That's all I really have to say about that. Sorry if I seemed scattered while explaining all that. This was just a lot to take in and I really struggled to find the right words.

I don’t want to start drama. I just wanted to mention that as it seemed important and something people should be aware of and cautious about. So if you have minor kids or you are a minor yourself, please be careful with the forums and just the internet in general. It’s a scary and dangerous place. But please don’t start any arguments or try to shame people who weren’t involved. Just research the situation and rationally make your decisions on how you want to move forward.

Speaking of moving forward, I’m moving forward this month by taking a break first, unless some responsibility gets shoved in my face unexpectedly. I do have some concrete plans though which include, trying to finish writing book two, and get some work done for another short story I have plans to publish sometime next year. It focuses on a 1920s murder mystery and the two main characters are a WLM couple who are investigators and owners of a nightclub/speakeasy.

I also have another YouTube video in the works about my end of year wrap up, future plans, and maybe even an illustrated  Q&A with me and my characters if I get enough questions. So if you have any questions you want answered about writing, about art, about me or my characters or literally anything under the sun, feel free to comment them, specify that you want them included in the Q&A, and I will be sure to add it to the video ;)

Lastly I plan on giving a few updates soon on some big projects I’m working on including an animated pilot for a show I’m developing so that’s gonna be super fun and I can’t wait to talk about that.

I know it can be hard moving forward with your projects after such a long month of hard work, but my biggest advice is to only do what you’re capable. Take a break if you want, or keep working, whatever you want. Remember, we’re here to have fun and work on things that make us happy. This isn’t a competition, and though I understand deadlines are sometimes unavoidable, but your mental and physical health always comes first so put everything aside and relax if you can. Your projects will always be there. For me personally, I tend to keep working after nano, but at a much slower pace. This way I still have things to do and keep me busy with, but not enough that I’m stressing myself out too much.

That’s all I really have for today. This month was super busy and stressful but of course I had fun working on my passion projects as well so that’s always a positive. I hope you enjoyed this video and have a lovely rest of your day.