A not-so-brief history of National Novel Writing Month from its beginnings in 1999, its growth as a nonprofit, its scandals, and where November Novel-writers can go from here,

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It's that time of year again. You may love it, hate it, fear it, or be totally uninterested. I'm talking about...well, what you're calling it now depends on your history with it and your feelings on the way things went down. It used to be National Novel Writing Month, aka., NaNoWriMo, and in some cases it still is. Some are calling it Novel November. Others seem to be not calling it anything and just *describing* what it is.

For the sake of ease, I'll be calling it NaNoWriMo (or NaNo for short) during the full duration of its existence as a nonprofit.

This is a rabbit hole. I set out to write something about commodifying creativity and the problems of centralizing movements under capitalism. But it ended up being so much more than that.

I'm going to do my best to sum everything up according to my understanding of what happened based on the graveyard of evidence from shut-down forums.

• Jester Dance by Conquest | https://freetouse.com/music/conquest
• Meditation Music by Dana Music from Pixabay
• Typing Sound Effect by DRAGON-STUDIO from Pixabay

• "State of NaNoWriMo" closing announcement
• Thread for NaNo Alternatives, Writing Discords & Resources
• TrackBear
• Ellipsus Preptober Templates
• NaNo 2.0
• Ellipsus's sponsorship retraction
• Daniel José Older's resignation post
• National Novel Writing Month: Inside the A.I. controversy tearing a writing community apart.
• What is NaNoWriMo's position on Artificial Intelligence (AI)? – National Novel Writing Month
• SPEAK OUT
• NaNoWriMo 2023-2025 controversy summary
• NaNoWriMo Moderator accused of child exploitation
• Spam, Spam, Spam Spam: Inkitt

Whatever your attitude toward emerging technologies, we can probably agree it’s tough to be online these days. The tools available seem to be multiplying for some and dwindling for others—particularly those who don’t want to use generative AI. A growing distrust of big tech is leading people to search for less exploitative options than Google or Microsoft.

Fortunately for them (and also me), new developers are creating tools that don’t push AI without the opportunity to opt-in. One of those new tools is Ellipsus, a writing tool created by a small group of writers who wanted better collaborative document options, and who are solidly for transparency, privacy, and writers' rights to their own work.

As a text editor, Ellipsus is a lot like Google Docs, but more focused on better performance for large docs. It’s got a git-style feature for better version control, richer permissions, flexibility, and creative customizations. It’s got a unique knack for supporting real-time collaboration, and is simple enough to start using right away.

Ellipsus has been very clear on their stance: no generative AI in the program, ever. They believe writers’ work shouldn’t be harvested to train models without consent. Generative AI, when built on creative labor, undermines originality, and they believe putting it inside a writing tool would be fundamentally counterproductive to fostering genuine voices. Ellipsus's creators want it to be a safe space for writers, and are working on offering better encryption and privacy protections, too.

Ellipsus has a vibrant Discord community of writers providing mutual support, betas, collaborators, and the opportunity to commune. Collaboration options in the documents themselves are pretty fun too—I love being able to create different drafts for different beta readers so no one has to feel put on the spot.

And another small but mighty feature is the variety of different skins you can apply to your program (my current favorite is Red Velvet 😊🎂).

Check out links of interest, including Ellipsus's full statement on generative AI in the notes below.

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Music by Amy Hakanson

Logo design by Leigh Kaisen

Karl Becker, founder of Improving Sales Performance and author of Iceberg Selling, talks about his books, how they've made a difference in his business and life, and the necessity of being open to surprises during the writing process.