Bowing Out of NaNoWriMo
Writing with a Purple Pen
Credit: Amanda Truscott via Pixabay
I’ve participated in National Novel Writing Month off and on since about 2001, albeit at different levels of involvement. I’ve always enjoyed it and have come to look forward to November when I can work on a fiction project. This year, though, I won’t be participating; and I don’t expect I’ll be doing so ever again.
Don’t misunderstand: I’m still going to do a November challenge every year, including this year. I’m just not going to formally affiliate with NaNoWriMo. When it first began, NaNo - and the now-defunct Office of Letters and Light - had many admirable goals, all related to writing. I was particularly supportive of the Young Writers Program, as well as associated the laptop loan program for classrooms.
But their recent foray into Diversity, Equity and Inclusion has left me out in the cold; and their explicit support of on-demand abortion has turned my opinion from ambiguous to negative. These forays into non-writing issues suggest a corporatization that detracts from the original intent and purpose of the project, in addition to (at least in one case) explicitly discriminating against me. At this point, after a lot of thought and prayer and not without some pain and regret, it’s time for me to bow out.
Wait a minute, you might be asking. What’s so awful about DEI, corporatization, and politics? Don’t you realize that everything is political? The answer is that I do, and the NaNoWriMo office and I are on opposite sides on too many issues that are important to me.
But let’s back up to the organizational changes first.
Over the years, NaNo has evolved from small groups of people all focused on a single project: writing a first draft of at least 50,000 words between midnight November 1 and 11:59 p.m. on November 30. There have always been “rebels” in NaNo parlance, who worked on alternate projects during this time period. I’ve been a rebel a couple of times myself. Over the past several years, though, NaNo has evolved to allow for projects that began prior to November 1; lasted after November 30; and covered practically any activity. This has greatly diluted the purpose of NaNoWriMo and leads to too much diversity in terms of goals. Put bluntly: it’s not about writing bad novels anymore.
During that time, the organization has re-branded to a more corporate “feel,” including development of a logo and the introduction of programs such as Camp NaNoWriMo. It also has added activities such as NaNo Prep. I’m not unhappy about Camp - I’ve done it myself once or twice - but all the different options have contributed toward the dilution of purpose. In addition, NaNoWriMo has now officially been seeking more (and larger) corporate sponsorships and growing their staff to include positions such as a development manager and its own public relations and social media operations employees.
All of this is fine if they wish to grow in a corporate direction, but it detracts from the feeling of small groups of people who are gathered around a single goal. NaNoWriMo is well on its way to being a successful large corporate entity. That’s actually an indicator of success, but as a corporation it’s one among many, and there are others that deserve at least as much attention and effort. It’s worth noting that the participation numbers suggest that more and more older writers are dropping out in favor of younger ones. Seeing as I’m in Generation X, that means I’m no longer in the target demographic anymore; and I’m content to leave NaNoWriMo to those for whom it’s better suited.
Speaking of demographics, which leads to discussions of politics, it’s become clear over the past year that NaNoWriMo is taking official positions on political issues outside of the writing sphere. This activity began with a rather controversial Tweet supporting writers in Palestine, which created a backlash from many Jewish and Zionist readers. As a result, they issued a partial retraction of their otherwise-valid position; however it’s my understanding that at least some people still consider them to be anti-Semitic.
I disagree. It is entirely possible to oppose Israel’s provocative governmental policies without being anti-Semitic, and to recognize their right to exist while also speaking up about their mistreatment of groups such as Palestinians and Beta Israel. More importantly, though, I was dismayed by NaNoWriMo’s use of non-writer resources as source material and their willingness to back-pedal on a reasonably stated (and relevant) position statement.
Things ratcheted up in June and July 2021, when again, NaNoWriMo made official position statements involving Indian Residential Schools in North America and about Pride. Both statements included “more information” links to explicitly anti-Catholic organizations. NaNoWriMo also saw fit to include the following statement in one of their Twitter threads:
Whenever we talk about things like this and share resources from the incredible people doing focused justice work, some people ask us why we speak out when we should “just be focused on writing.” NaNoWriMo believes that writing and creativity are powerful skills, and that people should have equitable access to these skills and to our community. We also acknowledge that this access is not currently equitable. People must be free of oppression and be confident in their ability to thrive so that they can even more fully access their creativity. These beliefs are detailed on our site, and inform how we advocate and educate, with and on behalf of our creative community.
This is a laudable statement, but runs completely at odds with some of their actions such as the deplatforming of J.K. Rowling/the Harry Potter universe for NaNoWriMo 2020 and the decision to “compensate BIPOC employees for the additional labor that they undertake working within a predominantly and historically white institution.”
Diversity means nothing when it doesn’t consider all opinions, and J.K. Rowling has made it clear she does not support identity-based discrimination or violence. Censorship directly opposes NaNoWriMo’s explicit goal of increasing diversity, and compensating employees for non-work-related attributes is blatant discrimination, regardless of which attributes are favored.
The final straw for me, though, came on September 14th, when NaNoWriMo made the statement that, “we believe that access to healthcare - like access to creativity - is a fundamental human right.” At this point, they openly began advocating about non-writing related issues. They also established a firm political position by describing the murder of unborn children as “healthcare” and a “right.” This was completely intolerable to me as a Catholic, and completely irrelevant to the support of writing and creative activities.
This was the point when I visited NaNoWriMo’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion page (linked earlier) and clicked on several of the links. One of them was to the company’s Racial Equity Strategy, adopted in March 2021, and included the following “vision” items:
- BIPOC maintained as the majority of annual interns.
- BIPOC as the majority of contractors, both in number and amount paid.
I have no issue with action items such as recruiting more strongly in the BIPOC community in order to increase engagement or active efforts for better inclusion in visible literature and promotional items; indeed, the action item that relates to BIPOC demographics matching the US population is completely laudable and appropriate. But these two action items involve discrimination in favor of BIPOC-owned businesses and BIPOC persons, at the expense of white-owned businesses and people.
Make no mistake: white privilege is real, and in my current practice, with all other things being equal I often choose to go with an option that supports at least one marginalized community. But explicit discrimination against a majority does absolutely nothing to promote a truly meritocratic society. Instead, it creates resentment and a reversal of fortunes that simply continue the problem under another guise.
In 1978, specific and rigid numeric goals as a part of affirmative action were struck down as a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. This finding has never been successfully challenged, and “majority” has an explicit meaning of “more than 50%.” As of this writing, the United States’ racial demographic is still majority white. Choosing to have a racial “majority” of over 50% BIPOC is directly contradictory to their goal of having their demographics reflecting the US population.
In addition, the strategy completely ignores other marginalized populations such as the disabled, who represent nearly 8.6% of the under-65 population, and women, who represent 50.8% of the population (Ibid.) Intersectionality isn’t a trendy buzzword; it’s a description of the fact that diversity is an extremely complicated prospect and it acknowledges that race isn’t the only basis for privilege.
The bottom line here is that, with their Racial Equity Strategy, NaNoWriMo has crossed the line into openly discriminatory corporate behavior that isn’t any actual affirmative action. I can’t support any organization that does that, particularly when it also supports openly anti-Catholic groups and when its activities start straying outside the lines of their spheres of interest.
Note that none of my criteria expect or require that NaNoWriMo be “unbiased.” In my mind, I am simply expecting them to follow their own stated rules and to remember that, as a corporation, they are not an actual person - only a legal one - and shouldn’t be given the same latitude as one. I’m also expecting them to actually engage with issues instead of limiting their actions to responses when they are criticized. That’s little more than political posturing and is only more evidence of corporatization.
I have no illusions about the impact of my decision to quit NaNoWriMo; they’re not even likely to notice, never mind actually care. That said, I am still hopeful that the friends I’ve made through participation - some of whom I consider close enough to be family - will not end our friendships over this decision. If I am going to be true to myself, it’s the only decision I can make.
Originally posted at https://collingwest.blog/2021/bowing-out-of-nanowrimo/.