For 20 years, the nonprofit organization NaNoWriMo, or the National Novel Writing Month, has been encouraging writers to put their excuses aside and dedicate the month of November to cranking out a 50,000-word novel, regardless of how bad it is. But now, the organization has succumbed to financial problems and a series of boneheaded PR moves.

Originally kicking off in 1999 as an informal “let’s all write a book together” idea, the organization went full nonprofit in 2006. Tens of thousands of hopeful scribes showed up each November, hoping to plow through their word counts and emerge with something that kind of, sort of looks like a manuscript.

NaNoWriMo Shut Down After Confusing Stance on AI

On Monday, the big announcement came via an email and a 27-minute video from interim executive director Kilby Blades. The org’s downfall came from a combo of poor finances and a ton of bad press, the most shocking of which was NaNoWriMo’s handling of a child grooming accusation involving a forum moderator.

The moderator was eventually removed from the organization, not for the accused child grooming but for entirely unrelated code of conduct violations. When the dam breaks on these kinds of accusations, the flood follows. Tons of other community members started coming out of the woodwork to file child safety complaints that they had previously kept to themselves.

On top of that, the organization also found itself at odds with its community as it took no official stance on the use of AI during its month-long novel-writing sprint, which in itself is a stance, whether the organization wanted to admit it or not. It’s a position that seemingly runs against the spirit of the organization, its goals, and the aspirations of its members and participants.

Blades says the organization is keeping its websites online for as long as possible so writers can salvage their accounts.