Episode 46: [WRITING CRAFT] The NaNoWriMo Controversy

In this week’s episode of the podcast we’re talking about our decision to offer our own weekly writing sessions on Zoom for anyone on our email list rather than join or promote the offerings from NaNoWriMo. If you’ve been in the writing community for a while, you’re familiar with NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, which has occurred every year in November since 1999, and became a non-profit organization in 2006. The goal of participating in NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words, or a novel, in a month. Recently, there’s been a lot of buzz in the writing community from writers who have moved away from collaborating or being associated with NaNoWriMo because of their stance on the use of AI technology and allegations of allowing a known child sexual predator to join their online forums. NaNoWriMo originally stated they supported the use of AI for disabled and marginalized communities. Needless to say, there was a lot of pushback from these communities and the broader writing world online who felt this stance undermined writers and the profession. One of the big issues surrounding AI is authors discovering their books have been used to train the algorithm and they’re not receiving any royalties from the use of their books. Essentially, their intellectual property has been taken without their permission to build the databases for AI to generate ideas and content for users who choose to write a book using AI. We’re most concerned with the original stance from NaNoWriMo being ableist and classist, and the lack of attention to safety for young writers in online forums. NaNoWriMo has since replaced their statement with a new perspective that doesn’t commit one way or another, and while they sent out apologies to their audience, many writers are not impressed. The fever pitch level of disdain for NaNoWriMo has many writers creating their own writing months and communities. The decision to engage with NaNoWriMo’s activities in November is up to you, but we wanted to present our perspective for you to consider how you can join with real people who are

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Transcript

Stephanie 1:15

Hello listeners, welcome to another episode of the Inspired Writer Collective podcast. We're so excited you're here joining us today. We have an interesting episode to share with you today. We, had decided we wanted to, talk a little bit about some of the controversy that's been jumping all over the internet with respect to NaNoWriMo since of course November is coming up and we're all familiar with, if you've been in the writing world for a while, that typically it's National Novel Writing Month. And while we're not connecting what we're doing with NaNoWriMo, we'll be addressing our perspectives on that throughout this podcast. But what we did want to share with you is that during the month of November, the Inspired Writer Collective is having our own series Free writing sessions on Monday afternoons from 3 to 4 p. m. Mountain Standard Time on Zoom. You need to make sure that you're on our email list in order to get this link. So, check the comments below, the description, and all of that. Uh, you'll be able to find a link there to hop on our email list and make sure that you get the information for that. We're really excited about it. We really are working to build our writing community. Real people writing stuff that's, uh, what our focus is. So we really hope you'll join us.

Elizabeth 2:47

And for those who are a little less familiar with NaNoWriMo, it got started in 1999. And then it got Set up as a non profit in 2006, but they've been doing this since 1999 where they have Like stephanie said the 30 days of november every year set aside to challenge writers or aspiring writers students anyone to write 50 000 words Within those 30 days, and it's got, you know, an online platform that includes forums and tracking word count and setting goals and And that sort of thing and just for an idea of the you know benefit of writing in community like this They had 413, 000 participants in 2022 and of those 51, 000 met that 50, 000 word count goal Goal. I mean, and that's, we're talking like, those are massive numbers, guys. I mean, that's something I think it breaks down to something like 1600 words a day. Um, which is only, I've only seen that on some of my best writing sessions, so it's, it's pretty serious drafting, but there's a lot of books that have come out of this, plenty of authors credit their success and, you know, big portions of their writing to participating in NaNoWriMo. Because of the intensity of the writing, it really is intended to be something that you utilize for a first draft. Because there's no way you're going to be adding that many words a day on like a rewrite or something like that. So it's, it's once you have an idea and you're ready to sit down. You might, a lot of people do their outlines ahead of time in October. Um, this is a big reason why I was running my memoir course, um, in October, so that those who want to can jump on these types of challenges that are available in conjunction with NaNoWriMo, whether it's a NaNoWriMo affiliated one or one that has broken away. Now, that kind of brings us to, why are there ones that have broken away? And that's Because of some recent controversy in a statement that was released that appeared to endorse the use of AI, artificial intelligence. Um, and the reasons that were cited was to, uh, assist those with disabilities or those from marginalized communities. And in the wording, there was some confusion about, How in the initial wording something about how those who? Critique the use of ai are ableist and classist Meaning like they're not thinking about these communities that need this resource in order to do this writing um Now there have since been clarifications and other statements of apology and whatnot from NaNoWriMo but it did not take long for this to reach a fever pitch for plenty of You Board members who were authors and things like that, um, sponsors to pull out as a backlash to this statement, obviously, generative AI or AI that, you know, is creating from a huge database, um, is already something that is. being really critiqued in any of the creative works, whether that's art, music, writing. Okay. information, like authors books, they don't pay royalties, they essentially steal this content and then work it into the algorithm to spit out things for other people who are put in a prompt, like give me a scene of two characters who meet in a dark alley to exchange it. You know, contraband, right? And so this is one of the reasons, one of the many reasons why a lot of authors have issue with AI because it's, they know for a fact, many of them that it has taken their work and added it to its database and they have not been compensated for that. Um, also, there's, there's, there's this whole concept of like the authenticity of. Being a writer, right? We work really hard to craft our storylines, our characters, the depth, the emotions, and I don't know if you, listener, have had a chance to read any of this AI generated stuff, but it is, they're, they're great. the the Amazon book market because it is so easy to the um, KDP or Kindle Direct Publishing, and some of it is just not good writing, and that's making it so much harder for our readers to find us, the writers who are actually writing our own words and crafting our own stories, um, so it's definitely become a big issue in the broader, um, Now, NaNoWriMo said in their kind of rebuttal or apology or clarification that because it is a conversation for the broader writer community, that is why they claim to have taken a stance of neutrality. Unfortunately, I, it doesn't come across as neutral at all. Like, you kind of make a stance one way or the other. To make a stance means that you're kind of, you know, picking a side, right? Like, how are you making a stance by staying neutral? Um, and so that was what they claimed as their reasoning for making a statement. There apparently had been a lot of online bullying and Delegitimizing of writers within their forums and social media channels. And so putting out the statement about the, their acceptance of AI, um, enlisting the reasons of these marginalized communities and people with disabilities supposedly came out of their reaction to trying to address the bullying that they were seeing within social media. Um, they did clarify in their statement, they said, we certainly don't believe Those with concerns about AI to be classist or ableist. And that's, that's a direct quote from their clarification statement that they published after the fact. Um, so yeah, this is, you know, it seems like there were some knee jerk reactions initially. There's also a lot of, um, really important points about, you know, what, what are you saying about the community of either marginalized communities or people with disabilities to say that they would need these generative AI methods to write, you know, to create writing that is successful and worthy of publication. Like, It's kind of messed up. I worked in disability services at the University of New Haven when I was a graduate student and there are tons of great resources that are super beneficial to people with disabilities like text to speech or speech to text, you know, and those are not Sure, they could be classified as, you know, AI. That's not generative AI. That is taking the existing, you know, stuff that the person is inputting, whether that's they're speaking the words, or they're having the text read to them. I mean, heck, that's one of the key things that we talk about in editing, is like, Have put it in a program that will read it to you because we hear things differently than than we read things. Right? And so that that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about generative AI. We're talking about where you put in a prompt and it writes a story for you and whether or not that should be accepted within this. essentially competition, right, with yourself, of writing 50, 000 words in a month. You didn't write those words, you wrote the prompt, so why is it that that, you know, should count? Um, and so there has been a lot of backlash from those who identify as disabled, from those who are from marginalized communities saying, we don't appreciate you making this statement about what we do or do not need, and that's Disrespectful and that's, you know, harmful to be putting out this narrative that, um, that we need something like this. So one of the quotes I read was disabled writers may use accommodating tools in our work. Okay. You know, I can kind of understand NaNoWriMo wanting to do something about the bullying. But claiming that they are making a neutral stance, just, I mean, it's not flying with me, Stephanie.

Stephanie 12:18

No, I, I agree with you. I mean, I don't really think when it comes to talking about generative AI that, you can take a neutral stance because somewhere in there, you're going to have an opinion I think it is very important to make sure that every, it is very important to see is about the generative into something like chat GPT. T and asking them to write the essay for you and I know in my work in college admissions coaching that one of the issues around that is that there's so many. Essays that, of course, have been used to train the, the database and everything that students essays are coming. If they use something of that nature, it comes out the same. So that's also 1 of those pieces where you're really taking out the voice. writer. And I think that that's really, I mean, that was my sense with everything that I, you know, everything that you shared, I read, you know, those, a lot of the same pieces. And I also, you know, watched a couple of TikTok videos by different authors. And I think one of their reasonings for, you know, having, you know, themselves off the board of NaNoWriMo and having this reaction was they felt that NaNoWriMo was not honoring human creativity, the human element, you know, and I think that when you look at it from that perspective, everybody has a story and they're like you shared, there's so many different ways that can go about finding the support and the resources to write their story. And that's, you know, one of our really strong beliefs is around, you know, standing behind the people who want to be a part of our community to help them write their stories. And we've had so many guests on this podcast. who have, gone years and years of going through the writing process. And I think that, you know, the idea of, you know, having this concentrated time around writing is wonderful. But I think when other pieces start to come into it, that take away from that human element and the human connection piece, And the piece that we've talked about so much over this last year of podcasting and just in our work is the power of community and having the community be so central to the writing process.

Elizabeth 15:10

Right, clearly, writing in community works. I mean, NaNoWriMo has already proven that. You know, it's a great example of proof that you can do giant tasks. That you would not otherwise push yourself to do because you have that accountability of knowing that you're not the only one doing it. You're not the only one showing up. I mean, that's essentially the essence of our time to write sessions. Um, and, and that's what, I mean, you and I, we, that's worked for us too, knowing that I'm going to show up to write at a certain time and you're going to be virtually there with me. And you know, it helps me push through all those barriers when I, I feel like I don't know where to go next with the story, and so then I might have a tendency to stop and put it away or be done for the day, but oh, look, there's 10 minutes still on the timer. Better keep going. Stephanie's still writing. So should I?

Stephanie 16:04

Well, and I think it contributes to one of the pieces that behind the whole idea of NaNoWriMo, of just writing with the flow. Just, it's purely, you know, there's not the expectation of having a structure, it's just about getting words on the page. you know, it's like Anne Lamott talks about, you know, the shitty first draft, like, you just are getting it out there, and it doesn't matter, you know, what's there, which is another reason why, you know, coming back to this idea of thinking that you need to have a computer program that's going to help you write it. To me, it just, I mean, that just takes away from the whole experience of really building up your writing muscle of showing up and getting your butt in the seat every day and really honoring your own creativity and your own thoughts. And, uh, you know, that sort of, of, you know, self doubt that creeps in and that happens for all of us and we've talked about that so much and, know, that's what we really want to, you know, break down and, you know, work towards breaking down those barriers to entry by, you know, offering our. Writing sessions now for free access for writers who want to be a part of it and be, you know, writing alongside real people who are there to, you know, be authentic and share stories. And it's not about critiquing. It's not about yes, you can write or you can't write. If you have an idea. And you have a way to put it on paper, whether it's handwriting, typing, text to speech, you know, whatever it might be, you know, maybe you have someone who's your scribe, you have someone who you dictate to who writes it for you. There's so many possibilities that don't, where you don't need to use generative AI program to make your idea happen on, on paper. every human has the capacity to share a story.

elizabeth_1_10-07-2024_150929 18:14

And we featured so many guests, especially, I mean, I think almost all of our guests. Our debut. Authors, right? And so you're talking about the amount of time it takes for them to, you know, write their story. Even some of the book reviews we've done, um, like Shelly Reed, it took her 10 years. Um, it took Paula, whose episode just recently came out, it took her like 20 years. Granted it was non fiction, so there's a whole Different like research element involved with that in addition to the writing. Um, I think someone else said 12 years I mean, there's just it happens right and that that's because in the process of writing our first We are becoming writers, you know. Like, it's, that first draft is going to be rough. And that second draft is going to be rough. And eventually, you'll get through a number of rewrites with feedback from editors, from potential agents. Once you get past agents, then they might be able to give you feedback. You know feedback from you know, potential publishers who you know say we're not going to take this but here's some You know writing advice and you incorporate that into it I mean it just it's a process and you have to go through the process To get that that crafted work On the other side like there's no fast track guys Like I know that so much of our like american culture wants to like find all these shortcuts and stuff and i've seen So annoyingly i've seen all these like real ads pop up, you know in on instagram that talk about I wrote a book with ai in one week and i've already sold 50 000 copies on amazon and you can too and it's like it's It's trash, it's garbage, you know, even if you're writing something like informational, like there's not going to be any heart in it, like where's the human element, and we as humans are still able, luckily, to largely decipher what is AI written and what is not, like it just, it has an emptiness, like you said, Stephanie, it lacks a voice, um, it's just. Yeah, there's just something missing in it. And it is that that that human element that only You and I as writers can bring, only humans can bring. Um, so yeah, I mean that's, that's sort of the wrap up of, of what's going on with, with NaNoWriMo. It doesn't mean that these kinds of formats are not helpful, they're absolutely helpful. Um, the challenges I mean, like the, the idea of writing in community and sitting down and setting a, you know, a big goal and, and chipping away at it together. There's like virtual meetings and there's like local meetings where you could go and sit in the same coffee shop. And while we don't have that ability to offer the local coffee shop writing, uh, in a podcast form, what we can offer is that every Monday in November, we're going to have an hour long writing session. So you'll be able to join Stephanie and I, as we write, what we do is we show up on the zoom link. We talk really briefly about what we're working on And depending on how many people there we may even skip that part Just because we don't want to eat up a lot of the writing time And then we mute and black out our screens set a universal timer that everyone can see And we write and we come back at the end And so if you want access to those zoom links, we're going to be sending it out to our entire email list So simply subscribe to our email list. You'll see those links in our show descriptions and join us for Square Any single one, all of them hop in later, whatever. It doesn't really matter to us, but those are going to be every Monday in November, um, at 3 PM, 3 to 4 PM mountain time.