A Shot of Jack #53: The End of NaNoWriMo
A Shot of Jack #53: The End of NaNoWriMo
Hello and welcome to the 53rd issue of A Shot of Jack. I’m Jack Cameron. This is my monthly newsletter where I talk about crime, crime fiction, and creative writing.
Let’s get this thing going.
A Better Lie
During my social media escapades, I came across an Trumpkin who got so mad at me that he went to both the Subscriber’s Edition and regular edition of A Better Lie and left two insulting, negative reviews. (The guy was a real piece of work.)
Everyone, please report the fake reviews as being inappropriate by clicking on the links below, going to the review and clicking ‘REPORT’.
I don’t want to offset that with fake positive reviews. I want people who have read the book to write honest reviews.
And if you’ve read A Better Lie, please take a moment and post a review on Amazon for the regular edition and the Subscriber’s Edition. With Amazon, the length of the review doesn’t matter so much as the amount of reviews. Even one sentence is fine.
Thanks.
By the way, Subscriber’s Editions have gone out to everyone who ordered one…except for FOUR of you. If you think you’re one of them, let me know.
Bad Pennies
As mentioned last week, Bad Pennies has had a schedule change. The next installment is a short story connected to Bad Pennies and will be out Friday, September 13th with new chapters releasing after that every other week.
If you’re one of our new subscribers, you can read the first few chapters of Bad Pennies for free by clicking here.
NaNoWriMo Deserves To Die
Waaaay back in 2009, my wife at the time suggested I participate in National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo, the annual event that takes place every November when willing writers of all levels of skill and talent do their best to write a novel of 50,000 words or more before the end of the month.
I didn’t do it in 2009. I wasn’t ready. But I did it in 2010 and that was the first draft of A Better Lie. Over the next fourteen years, it sat, went through two publishers, three editors, and fourteen drafts, and was published in June (as mentioned above).
The idea behind NaNoWriMo is to ignore all the distractions, reasons, and excuses that stop writers from finishing the stories they want to tell. A finished piece of crap is better than an unfinished masterpiece, as they say.
It’s also supposed to be fun. It’s not about bragging rights. It’s not about checking off a box. It’s a personal challenge that you either succeed or fail in doing in the course of a month.
The organization behind all of this has been around since 1999 and has had over 400,000 participants since then. But the non-profit company has made some questionable decisions in the past. In 2022 they teamed-up with Inkitt and Manuscript Press, two organizations known for low quality and allowing substandard and problematic material to be published.
Then last year they were accused of allowing the grooming of minors participating in the event. This resulted in, among other things, the organization shutting down their forums. And now they’ve stepped into another controversy.
This week NaNoWriMo not only announced that they were accepting of novels written partially or even entirely by artificial intelligence, but also insulted anyone who disagreed with them.
Their notice read in part:
“We believe that to categorically condemn AI would be to ignore classist and ableist issues surrounding the use of the technology, and that questions around the use of AI tie to questions around privilege.”
Some of the fallout from this decision has been immediate. Star Wars novelist, Daniel Jose Older announced his resignation from NaNoWriMo’s Authors Board saying he was, “officially stepping down from [NaNoWriMo's] Writers Board and encouraging every writer I know to do the same.” Authors Board Member Cass Morris also stepped down writing an essay about her decision. And Maureen Johnson has resigned from the Writers’ Board of their Young Writers Program as well.
In far less important news, I have deleted my account with NaNoWriMo and will not be associating with them in the future.
Their explanations didn’t make a lot of sense to me and felt disingenuous. So I looked into it.
Initially, I applied common sense to their decision. Accepting manuscripts made using artificial intelligence doesn’t require them to spend money and time installing AI detection software. And if any schmo with an Internet connection can dig up and vomit out a hodgepodge of crap we’ve read before to the tune of 50,000 words, then the userbase of their organization might increase. Because there’s a LOT more morons who want to call themselves writers than there are actual writers interested in honing their craft.
If an organization can increase their numbers while spending no money doing it, that’s a pretty good deal for them, but it’s actually even better than that. NaNoWriMo isn’t endorsing AI writing for free. One of NaNoWriMo’s sponsors this year is an AI writing software company. They’re getting paid to be in favor of Artificial Intelligence.
It’s telling that in their argument in favor of Artificial Intelligence they insult anyone who disagrees with them by suggesting anyone against it must be classist or ableist or speaking from a place of privilege. They really trotted out all the social justice buzzwords in hopes of getting some Progressive support for their obviously capitalist and anti-creative stance.
NaNoWriMo’s empty claims that those of us against the use of AI are all classist and ableist is simply a lie. There are hundreds if not thousands of individuals with disabilities who have written novels for NaNoWriMo without the help of AI. There is nothing ableist about someone with disabilities completing a novel.
Also, you would think someone making an argument regarding NaNoWriMo, AI, and classism would not be suggesting that the person against allowing those with Internet access, a computer they can use for a whole month uninterrupted, and knowledge and access to a large language model generative artificial intelligence is the classist one. Yet that is exactly what the folks at AI-software sponsored NaNoWriMo are suggesting.
If NaNoWriMo truly cared about access and inclusivity, people would be able to mail in manuscripts written with paper and pencil. They don’t. They care about actually doing as little as possible while raking in the money from shoddy and problematic companies.
NaNoWriMo does not care about or support writers. It has a history of allowing problematic material and allowing unacceptable behavior with minors. Now it is supporting the opposite of what creative writing is.
NaNoWriMo should shut their doors in shame.
What I’m Clicking On
One Last Thing
Thanks to the American school year, September always seems like the beginning of the year to me, so it seems like a good time to remind you where else you can find me online.
Email: jackcameronis@gmail.com
Facebook: facebook.com/jackcameron
Twitter/X: Just kidding I deleted my account.
Threads: www.threads.net/@jackcameronwrites
Instagram: instagram.com/jackcameronwrites/
Other Website: TacomaStories.com where every Monday I write about a Tacoma homicide.
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