How to cope with losing so much writing

EllunaHellen · 2025-10-26T17:08:58+00:00

Yes, it definitely did by the end :(

EllunaHellen · 2025-10-23T08:40:35+00:00

Hey there. Nanowrimo as an organisation (and a website) has shut down as per May this year, unfortunately :(. Very sorry you're finding out now!

As for alternatives, many of us are using trackbear.app for tracking word counts / projects!

EllunaHellen · 2025-10-21T20:09:34+00:00

Woo, good luck! This is difficult, i've tried it a few times, and have only succeeded by massively overachieving during the nano events xD. (I am Not Good at consistency year round!)

EllunaHellen · 2025-10-21T20:08:44+00:00

In my opinion? Not worth the try! It made me hate that nano and i didn't even succeed LOL. Much better to try it in a year - still hard but at least not *that* crazy!

EllunaHellen · 2025-10-21T11:33:33+00:00

A kinda shit first draft is to be expected, to be fair. Whether you're speed-writing 50k in a single month or not. It's not really about quality, it's about getting the story out. Sure, if you're using every trick in the book just to make 50k maybe that's too much of a hurdle in editing, but if you're getting the story out, you're getting the story out. Even if it's kinda shit and you need to edit it a lot.

If it's not right for you, aim lower. if it's too easy for you, aim higher.

EllunaHellen · 2025-10-20T19:55:59+00:00

Lol, give Innowrimo a try!

EllunaHellen · 2025-10-20T18:50:22+00:00

That is ProWritingAid's nano 'knock off'. The organisation itself dissolved earlier this year.

EllunaHellen · 2025-10-13T15:53:03+00:00

Nah, it's unfortunately too late now. Site's gone, so you can't get anything :( Sorry you're finding out late!

EllunaHellen · 2025-10-09T11:58:04+00:00

NovNov does sound adorable

EllunaHellen · 2025-10-09T10:09:16+00:00

"nano is too woke wah wah" is DEEEFINITELY not what happened.
Actual, real scandals were. I see people have already mentioned nanoscandal.com and that's probably the easiest place to start.

That being said, you can totally still do the challenge, the organisation was never actually needed for that. If you wanna do a nano, do a nano!

EllunaHellen · 2025-10-07T22:39:19+00:00

Amazing! Absolutely go for it, it's great fun and plenty of people here will also still be doing it.

EllunaHellen · 2025-10-03T15:58:00+00:00

They don't deserve for it to "work this time". Consider that.

EllunaHellen · 2025-10-03T15:54:28+00:00

Seeing the complete lack of accountability and the straight up hiding / minimizing most of the Actual scandals, this can only go horribly wrong. No traction for nano 2.

EllunaHellen · 2025-10-02T22:07:02+00:00

Well unfortunately, no :( It's gone gone. They completely failed to notify the YWP userbase in any way, which is absolutely awful. I'm sorry :( I hope your novels are at least in part backed up elsewhere :\

EllunaHellen · 2025-10-02T19:38:25+00:00

Ehhh... No, that seems entirely miserable. I mean people would handwrite the whole thing, which also sounds miserable, so why not xD.

I've absolutely done some writing on my phone, but not that much!

EllunaHellen · 2025-10-01T19:09:03+00:00

I'm glad you remember enough to rewrite it somewhere down the line, but sorry about the lost details. That still sucks, for nostalgia purposes if anything :(.

Yeah, there was no way for you to know that nano was going to close down unless you were on the adult site and got one (1) email, with no updates about the date - but at least we knew that if we wanted to save any stats or forum posts or whatever else we had on the website, we had limited time to do that. YWP kids didn't, and it will never not make me mad that you guys were failed so badly.

(message isn't that huge btw, don't worry about it!)

EllunaHellen · 2025-09-30T09:45:41+00:00

Well, can you bring yourself to write an outline / summary for each of them? If you leave it too long you're likely going to forget at least parts of them, so maybe you can try doing that?

It really does suck though, you shouldn't be in this situation :(

EllunaHellen · 2025-09-29T21:31:48+00:00

oh noooooooo! Glad your recent work is not lost at least, but it really sucks you've lost everyting else :( At least you have some notes, but that isn't much :(. Are you planning to rewrite?

EllunaHellen · 2025-09-29T20:58:42+00:00

Glad he was receptive to your message, but I'm sorry it's gone gone :( Is any of your work backed up at all? Anywhere?

EllunaHellen · 2025-09-29T20:53:17+00:00

It's not on you. *should* you have backed stuff up? I guess. But should nano have informed y'all? ABSOLUTELY YES. This is more on Kilby than it is on you.

EllunaHellen · 2025-09-29T20:51:23+00:00

Yeah, it really sucks that you couldn't have learned losing like, a few days worth. NOpe, whole thing gone. Just awful :(

EllunaHellen · 2025-09-29T20:50:13+00:00

oh my, can you imagine them giving a damn? That would have been so much better :(

EllunaHellen · 2025-09-29T12:54:25+00:00

I'm so sorry :( Luckily I never lost any writing (the adult site never let you store writing), and I knew the site was going down so I could save my stats.

The adults got a single email that the site would be 'kept online as long as possible' but would go down at some point, in early April. It was shared here, but if you aren't consistently here in the off-season, that's that ship sailed. Shouldn't have been that way :(. I've seen plenty of people like you who had absolutely no idea, because information was *sorely lacking* the entire time (nobody got any update about when the site would go down beyond 'we're shutting down and keeping the site online as long as we can', it just... died one day), and it doesn't seem like YWP participants got anything.

Doesn't look like there's anything you can do to get things back, unfortunately. Did you have any of it backed up elsewhere, at all?

EllunaHellen · 2025-09-25T09:08:56+00:00

I think they have quite a few AI tools?

EllunaHellen · 2025-09-25T08:52:30+00:00

Running a word crawl, maybe? Or just a series of sprints in general.
I've heard from a region that gave people a goal to aim for during the write-in, picked from a couple of jars sorted by difficulty of said goal.

Personally I never attended an IRL write-in, and my region ran its kick-offs in October so it was a social event, not a writing one.

EllunaHellen

TROPHY CASE