When it comes to this weeks’ news about NaNoWriMo and Archive.Org, I couldn’t help thinking ‘this is the writing version of building implosions.’ What am I talking about? How would a building implosion compare to NaNoWriMo and Archive.Org? First, let’s deep-dive on how NaNoWriMo and Archive.Org have impacted the business of writing in the past few years. Then we’ll talk about how building implosions work.
First, NaNoWriMo – the annual ‘write a novel in 30 days’ competition that encourages writers to ‘write more’ has been around for 25 years. Wool by Hugh Howey, Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins, and Cinder by Marissa Meyer are NaNoWriMo novels along with almost 400 other titles. Some authors find the competition-style effort to be valuable and perhaps you’re one of them.
What’s the Problem?
I’m not a fan of NaNoWriMo for personal reasons – I should be writing all the time, I don’t need a competition to motivate me. If it helps you, great. I’ll even give you some suggestions. The problem is now NaNoWriMo is chasing the AI pony onto thin ice, saying GenAI to write is an issue of abelism, “benefitting those who might otherwise need to hire human writing assistants or have differing cognitive abilities.”
Successful authors like Chuck Wendig trashed that opinion so hard that you could wrap his blog post in a Hefty bag. “”Generative AI empowers not the artist, not the writer, but the tech industry. It steals content to remake content, graverobbing existing material to staple together its Frankensteinian idea of art and story,” wrote Chuck Wendig, the author of Star Wars: Aftermath, in a post about NaNoWriMo on his personal blog.”
What does this all mean for the writing and storytelling industry? Simply this – we’re seeing some ‘writing implosions’ when it comes to NaNoWriMo and Archive.Org. These are storytelling structures that are collapsing into their own footprint, much like a 20-story building collapses through controlled demolition. Here’s how a ‘building implosion’ works:
How to Implode a Building (Or Institution)
First, the blasters map the building architecture and determine the structure’s weak points. Then they position explosives on those points, timing the detonation and employing different equipment to guarantee the building falls into itself. All of that is done so a building can ‘implode’ safely with a minimum of risk to surrounding people or structures. Building implosions work because you consciously rip out the support columns and damage the load-bearing walls through precise applications of force.
That’s what NaNoWriMo and Archive.Org have done to themselves. By choosing dumb hills to die on, by consciously poisioning the well of support they carefully built over a couple of decades, NaNoWriMo and Archive.Org are all but guaranteed to collapse into their own footprints. The ‘structural failure’ may happen fast, or slow, but they’ve damaged what makes their buildings stand and collapse is all but inevitable.
I’m sad about all this – it’s definitely a loss for those who spend countless hours and endless calories championing the cause of the writing industry. Nonetheless, when the sirens wail and you can hear them counting down from ten … it’s time to pick up your toys and get out from under the blast radius. I love watching building implosions, so here are some ‘greatest hits’ to take your mind off of the sad stuff:
I try to teach as well as inform – so even if you don’t care about NaNoWriMo and Archive.Org, at least you learned something cool about the business of writing and implosions. Its in your business to remain aware of what’s going write right in your industry as well as what’s going wrong. At the very least, it gives you a chance to run for it when the structure is coming down.
