I have 2 New Year’s resolutions to complete for this year (ambitious, I know):

1. Finish and release a song!
2. Finish the first draft of my novel!

I’m proud to say that I am nearly done with my first goal, thanks to an insanely talented friend of mine who offered to produce it. As for the first draft…it’s trudging along at a snail’s pace. Do I have a shot at finishing a first draft now? Absolutely, and over the next month, you’re coming along for the ride.

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)

I’ve always wanted to write a book, but for a while, I didn’t have the slightest idea what I’d write about. Early this year, I bought a Scrivener license to get started on one. That was in February…it’s now October, and I’ve only got 10,000 words. Hey, it’s fine! It’s a start! I think I’ve been in my head a lot about…well…my first draft thoughts. It takes a lot of patience, diligence, and commitment to write a book. I’ve only written short creative pieces, usually poetry which includes my songwriting. Short-form content tends to be a lot easier for me, especially when my ADHD meds wear off at the end of the day. These types of works have typically flowed out of me in the moment. I might be wrong, but novels don’t really work like that. Unless you’re Stephen King. But dear reader, I am committed to achieving this goal of mine.

NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, is an annual challenge for writers to complete a 50,000-word novel during November. I learned about it a while ago, and now that I have an idea for a novel, thought I’d try my hand at this challenge. I’ll be writing about 1,700 words a day to meet this goal.

The death of NaNoWriMo

The official nonprofit behind NaNoWriMo, which was founded in 1999, shut down this year. NaNo faced heavy backlash over its stance to allow the use of AI in novel submissions (among other issues). And I can see why this stance in particular upset participants. I mean, doesn’t this completely miss the point of the challenge? Someone submitting an AI-generated novel can’t call themself an author. The point of NaNoWriMo is for aspiring authors to challenge themselves by locking in and writing 50,000 words on their own. Ironically, this AI tool called ProWritingAid is hosting a “Novel November” event supported by Scrivener and ElevenReader (another AI tool that transcribes audio to text).

All of this begs the question: to what extent should authors be permitted to use AI in the drafting of their works? Does even minimal use of AI tooling make someone less of an author? If you prompt an AI agent to write a story, providing a brief synopsis of the plot and characters, can you bundle the output into a manuscript and call it your work? No. Can you use an AI tool to explore how a few lines of dialogue might unfold, tweak the output after a few exchanges, and call it your work? I don’t see much of a problem with that, as long as it isn’t all the time and you maintain your voice. I’m not anti-AI, I’m anti-blindly using AI for literally everything.

NaNo 2.0

The original NaNoWriMo org may be dead, but the community it left behind is still going strong! Lucky for me there’s a new NaNo 2.0 site that’s full of resources, swag, and blog content for encouraging NaNo participants like myself in reaching that 50k word goal! The resources are legit since the group that started NaNo 2.0 includes longtime volunteers and organizers from the last org.

My plan

Stick to the original AI-free challenge and keep at the novel I’ve already started. I may try to find a Discord community to join for some accountability. The best part of community challenges is suffering together, right?

I’ll give regular updates on my progress as I knock out this draft. First badge I’ve collected: