National Novel Writing Month Without NaNoWriMo? | Early Thoughts On NaNoWriMo 2025

We're halfway through September 2025.

This time of year, you'd likely see posts about Preptober, the pre-NaNoWriMo planning period spanning the length of October. Writers hinting at what they'd be working on in November or looking to create online writing groups to encourage one another along the way.

But the thing is, National Novel Writing Month's looking a little different in 2025. NaNoWriMo is gone.

I've written about the controversies that led to the eventual dissolution of the nonprofit behind NaNoWriMo in the past, so you can check those out for more context.

For the first time in over two decades, there is no NaNoWriMo.

Or is there?

The organization behind the annual challenge may be no more, but November is still swiftly approaching. Since the announcement back in March, I've been asking myself how and if NaNoWriMo can continue without the organization itself. Despite the way it ended and being a formidable undertaking, it had its share of positives. It was motivation for so many participants to start writing (or start writing again) and find community in online writer spaces. For many writers, myself included, NaNoWriMo was the starting point of a now-beloved project. It was a staple of the writing community.

I don't want us to lose that spirit.

That brings us to the question: can NaNoWriMo exist without NaNoWriMo?

I'd say so.

We've already seen it. When the controversies came to light, many writers abstained from participating in NaNoWriMo altogether, while others took on the challenge of writing 50,000 words in 30 days separately from the organization. A number of offshoots were created as well, fostering that sense of community NaNoWriMo was known for; we also saw this during this past summer in lieu of Camp NaNoWriMo, the April and July versions of NaNoWriMo. Some writers also created a modified version of NaNoWriMo, extending it beyond thirty days or working towards a different word count goal.

It's this spirit that I want to see endure in the writing community. I don't want us to lose the plot, dare I say, and forgo that sense of camaraderie that NaNoWriMo instilled. I want to see that continuation of encouragement and friendship, even if it looks a little different this year.

It's still rather early for me to have a concrete plan for November, but I'd like to participate in a NaNo-esque challenge again. One of the reasons I bowed out in 2024, along with everything going on with NaNoWriMo itself, was not knowing how it would fit into my schedule at a still-new-to-me job. Having been there for over a year, nearly two, I have a better sense of what to expect and feel more confident in my ability to balance it all. Plus it'd be the kick in the pants needed to make some serious headway on my current WIP!

As we approach November, I'll be keeping an eye out for challenges inspired by NaNoWriMo. There may be some returning from last year, too (and if you happen to know of a writing challenge similar to NaNoWriMo, shout it out in the comments of this post). I might even create one for myself that suits me better than the official NaNoWriMo rules did.

When I mentioned this to a non-writer coworker, he put it perfectly: "Why would you not do it, though? It was a thing before it became a big thing [the organization], right? So why... why not do it?"

In a way, 2025 feels like the perfect year to do NaNoWriMo. Coming out of the heartbreak and disappointment that many writers felt in the wake of the nonprofit's closure, it would be like rising from the ashes in our own right. A way to say that even though the challenge itself is no more, and there's the ever-looming presence of Generative AI in creative spaces, we're still human and still here. That we're pressing on and have stories we need to tell, just as countless writers before us have done in times of uncertainty.

Whatever the case may be, I just hope that the feeling of writerly goodwill and community continues on in the absence of NaNoWriMo. That was always the biggest draw for me and my favorite part of my NaNo experience. It'll be interesting to see how everything shakes out in this first November without it.

I'll close out this post the way I've closed out my others regarding the end of NaNoWriMo: Just keep writing. In spite of it all. Keep writing.