NaNoWriMo and I once had a passionate and short-lived flame. Our love couldn’t die no matter how many times writer’s block tried. Stuck in chapter one? No problem. Just down three more mugs of Keurig coffee and type till your fingers ache. My creativity pulled me, word by word, sometimes dragging my deadweight, till we reached the brink of December and the manuscript was done. We did this dance three Novembers in a row.

The next November rolled around, and I was ready to revisit my love. I followed the typical procedure: brainstorming ideas in the spring, building characters in the summer, developing a plan in the fall. I loved the world I had built, and I loved the figures who populated it.

But when I began to write, it was… hard? Since when has putting words to paper felt like a grueling trek through thick overgrowth beneath a rolling storm?

Whatever. It’s fine. I had three good years in a row, so not “winning” this year was no big deal. This was confirmed by my success the following April with Camp NaNoWriMo. Last November must have been a fluke.

Guess what happened the next November? Yeah, it was even harder. I made it four days before I called it quits.

And I really loved that book idea, too – I even revisited it in a Camp NaNoWriMo attempt four years later, which was also unsuccessful – so it couldn’t have been for lack of passion that I was continually failing.

You might feel that failing is a harsh word for this situation, and I agree. In retrospect, I wasn’t even close to the failure I believed myself to be. But the semantics of the NaNoWriMo culture (referring to a successful 30-day run as “winning” and those who complete it as “winners”) and my track record of “wow, this writing stuff is easy!” culminated in a deflated sense of self. I was a helium-less balloon.

The following years, marked in our calendars as 2019-2024, I stopped trying. There was a stint in April 2022 in which I embarked on a new manuscript with my writer friend E.C. Bowman, and we both fizzled out under the pressure of our day-to-day stressors.

Then, of course, there were the controversies surrounding NaNoWriMo. The organization came under fire in 2023 for allegations of moderators grooming minors on their public forms, and then there was the debacle in 2024 with NaNoWriMo and AI that tarnished its reputation in many writers’ eyes. I wrote a lengthy statement on it myself that year that never saw the light of day. I won’t share the entirety of it here, in part because it’s not relevant to this post and in part because it reads like the angry rant of a disgruntled author, but I will share the introduction of that scrapped statement.

“Although I have some strong feelings towards the organization,” I wrote, “we can separate the event (National Novel Writing Month) from the corporation to continue enjoying our writing-filled Novembers.” I stand by that. Although I believe in creativity, I also believe in grace. I would never abandon an organization based on one misstep like this.

Unfortunately – or fortunately, depending on whom you ask – I didn’t have the opportunity to forgive and forget, because NaNoWriMo announced they were ceasing operations in April 2025.

In an email that is now immortalized on Reddit, NaNoWriMo announced, “After six years of struggling to sustain itself financially, NaNoWriMo (the nonprofit) will begin the process of shutting down.”

Reddit user r/theredwoman95 goes on to summarize the companion YouTube video, stating that NaNoWriMo “has been operating in the red since 2018.” By 2023, funds were so tight that the organization was already struggling to plan events for its community when the accusations of child endangerment arose. Although NaNoWriMo had implemented background checks for its moderators (they didn’t have that already?) and shut down the all-ages message boards by December of that year, it seems the damage was fatal.

I feel surprised by this announcement, but I’m not sure why. I know the realities of funding nonprofits: my day job is in marketing for a nonprofit. I know the trepidation of budgeting an organization like that. I suppose NaNoWriMo felt invincible; untouchable. But my “2015 NaNoWriMo Winner” T-shirt is rotting in a landfill somewhere, and writers all over the world no longer have the benefits of writing 50K words in 30 days.

Now that NaNoWriMo is gone, I’m going to write a novel for the first time since 2016.

Just kidding. I am going to embark on a new novel-writing journey, but my decision was entirely unrelated to NaNoWriMo’s announcement. Admittedly, I likely wouldn’t have used NaNoWriMo’s services regardless.

Am I roughing it alone, program-free? Hell no. Writing has become too difficult for me in these post-covid years for me to feel confident in my ability to complete a manuscript without external motivation.

For one, I have my husband, Logan: a fellow creative and the reason I’m doing this. Half asleep, he mumbled to me late one night, “I miss when you would write more. You should write more.” I conked out immediately after – shoutout to my chronic pain meds and the deeply tranquilizing effect they have on me – but his words seeped into my next few days. He was right; I missed when I would write more, too.

In lieu of the late NaNoWriMo, I have signed up for AutoCrit’s summer Novel90 program. My reasons are simple: I want to write another book, and to be successful, I need to try it in a new way.

I’m giving this commitment a permanent home on my blog for two reasons:

1. I hope this encourages those of you who have found it increasingly difficult to write in the last few years since covid. It’s feels backwards that our creativity has regressed in the wake of a worldwide pandemic, but you’re not alone. It’s confusing and messy and we’re figuring it out together.
2. I need accountability. My writing these last several years has been sparse at best, and at worst it has been encompassed by a halo of loathing and despair. I can’t travel with empty pockets and expect to return with a bag of priceless souvenirs. I need my commitment to be public so the responsibility can push me forward through low moments.

“A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. Ideas have endurance without death.”

John F. Kennedy

NaNoWriMo may have died, but its ideas live on. In the same way novel-writing wasn’t invented in 1996 with the conception of this November event, it didn’t disappear in 2025 when the event was halted. Life goes on. Novels must be written.

So let’s embark on a new journey, writer.

If you want to join me on Team Plantser for AutoCrit’s 90-day writing marathon, pre-registration is open for June-August (2025) and you know your girl has already signed up. This post isn’t sponsored by AutoCrit; I’m just excited to begin this new journey. I hope you’ll walk alongside me.

Drop a comment below if you’re going to participate with me, or shoot me a DM on Instagram @samanthauhrig.author.