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If generative AI were trained only on public domain works, and was not horrible for the environment, and was always clearly marked computer-generated and never attempted to be passed off as anything else, and was always automatically public domain from creation, literally no one would have a problem with it.

But unfortunately we live in the world where tech billionaires are just stealing from poor people who've in most cases never seen a single cent in return for all of their work, then selling this stolen content to other rich fucks, and allowing it to be used to scam people out of their time and money in various ways and costing artists of all kinds their jobs, and all the while the billionaire fucks and their accomplices are pretending they're all just doing this to help "those poor useless disabled people, who are fundamentally incapable of creating anything for themselves."

yeah fucking right.

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Day 3! We tackle core skills for fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and fanfiction!

To anyone still doing NaNo: consider, not! The organization has committed itself to insisting AI can replace artists, and used ableism to justify it. Join me in practicing craft, and if you're looking for a community, the discord server that brought you the goncharov lore compendium has pivoted to original work, and we're doing word counts and sprints!

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Happy second day of November! Consider ditching NaNo and doing a challenge by a disabled creator instead!

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Hey folks! giving up NaNoWriMo because of their shit terrible AI policies and ableism? give another writing challenge a try! happy november!

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Today's the day!

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The point of fiction is actually to put that guy in a situation™️, and he might try to tell you the point is to then get him out of the situation, WRONG, second situation

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Another source! This one's very sweet and encouraging about the different difficulties people tackle when writing.

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Novella November 2024 Announcement Post

Hate AI, but love writing challenges?

Want to take part in a global, fun project to write a Novella in one month?

Grab some friends, and take part in Novella November, by writing 1,000 words a day for the month of November, ending with a 30,000 word Novella to test and stretch your novel-writing skills!

Your goal is not perfection, but merely getting into the habit of writing a litte bit every single day :D

No website, no sign-ups -- Just a community initiative to write using only your own word!

What are the rules? Just Three so far!

#1 - No AI

#2 - No Plagiarizing

#3 - Wordcount for the month should only come from what you write during the month.

What does that mean?

Only words written during November should go towards your Wordcount for the month... but! Feel free to use your 30k words as a continuation of previous writing, or just make it the first 30k words in a longer novel!

Don't think you can write a whole entire 30k word story? Write a series of short stories that total up to 30k!

Not ready to write original works yet? Write a 30k word fanfiction that you can post after the month is over!

Share your writing experience, tips, encouragement, and questions in the #Novella November tag!

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EDIT, from the tags: Want a progress tracker? Track your progress with TrackBear!

https://trackbear.app/

Don't have a word processor? Use LibreOffice , the free and open-source alternative to Microsoft Word!

Want to organize/storyboard your Novel and don't want to pay a subscription? Try 7writer by Simon Haynes!

Want to be able to listen to your story aloud for proofreading using TTS (text to speech)? Try Balabolka!

Or, create some custom progress / Goal Cards in advance you can fill out as you reach word goals! For ideas and templates, search this blog for "goal cards" :D

Want to do a writing challenge in more than just November? Check out my ideas here for year round challenges to keep you writing consistently! Got feedback? Send it in, I'd love to see everyone's ideas!

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EDIT 2: I almost forgot to mention, if you are unable to write/type your story, you can also narrate/dictate your story to your preferred recording device!

If you're doing a Recording only and it doesn't automatically generate a transcript, it would obviously be hard to judge the word count -- but you're also working with a lot of obstacles, so I'd say if you're able to complete your story via voice recording from start to finish, you've definitely achieved the goal!

Edit #3: added the title "Novella November 2024 announcement post" to the top to make it more standard with my Ominous October and Drabble December posts (will be updating Outline October shortly) , added "Official Announcement Post 2024" to the tags so people can easily find the monthly events for 2024, and added a bit of bold to the third bullet point in the original post from September 2nd 2024 for emphasis.

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Here's Everything You Need to Know About RDMO! The first Rough Draft Month will begin on November 1st, 2024.

Rough Draft is a 30-day creative challenge led by a small group of writers and artists seeking to find joy and community in the creative process.

What is a "Rough Draft"? Every great piece of art or literature starts as an idea - but it doesn’t stop there. A rough draft is your first attempt at taking on your creative project from start to finish. This process can be very daunting - but that's why we're here. RDMO will help you achieve your goals in a fun and community focused way. Sharable Information: Instagram | Tumblr

Goal Tiers Instead of a main challenge, we created 4 tiers (60K, 50K, 30K, and Flex) to create flexibility for your unique project. Examples of a Flex Goal include lines for poetry, scenes for screenplays, panels for graphic novels/cartoonists, and more. This year we will be tracking our progress together on trackbear.app Pick the goal that fits your project and enter it's code in the leaderboard section of trackbear!

🗻 Mountain Trail (60k): 74d0d9e9-95bd-4845-9d72-6f94f22ad3cd 🌳 Forest Trail (50k): 5469a86e-198c-495f-9079-79e9200194ba 🌊 Waterfall Trail (30k): 190f5737-4801-42e0-a265-f3abafaa764b 🌙 Moonlight Trail (Flex Goal): 6e2d3176-6bf4-4665-bad6-f77b8fdc72d1

Challenge maps coming soon!

Community Events One of the best parts about November creative challenges is the mutual support and encouragement during such a big project. Join our Discord to participate with the RDMO community!

Current Event: Blueprint Your Rough Draft • October 2024 Plan your project with us throughout the month of October! Other Features: 🎶 Listen to & save our curated writing playlists ✉ Sign up for our email newsletter for updates, advice, and resources to help you meet your goal - like how to find inspiration for your next project! 🏅 A unique way to collect achievements - coming soon 👀

We are working hard to create a space that promotes creativity and originality while being fun and supportive. Thank you for your interest and we hope to see you on the trails! ✏

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The new statement from nanowrimo is really something

“Supporting and uplifting writers is at the heart of what we do. Our stated mission is “to provide the structure, community, and encouragement to help people use their voices, achieve creative goals, and build new worlds—on and off the page”. Our comments last month were prompted by intense harassment and bullying we were seeing on our social media channels, which specifically involved AI. When our spaces become overwhelmed with issues that don’t relate to our core offering, and that are venomous in tone, our ability to cheer on writers is seriously derailed.”

The cognitive dissonance required to make a statement like this baffles me.

“We’re supporting and uplifting writers by promoting the plagiarism machine, and you’re bullying us!”

Respectfully, the statements about AI were completely unprompted on nanowrimo’s part. The gall to accuse writers of distracting from nano’s “core purpose” when they’re the ones who sold out to AI is astounding. Like, you can’t make an extremely controversial public statement about AI to a community of creatives that have not ever reacted well to AI, and get upset when they take issue with it.

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More sources!

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grabbing new writers by the shoulders. it is important to write what you love and to love what you write. if you spend all your time trying to make something other people will approve of you will hate yourself and everything around you. learn at your own pace. you have time. i’m proud of you

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if you're trying to get into the head of your story's antagonist, try writing an "Am I the Asshole" reddit post from their perspective, explaining their problems and their plans for solving them. Let the voice and logic come through.

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More sources!

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I'm still scheduling prompts for the event but I wanted to share this, courtesy of one of Steven King's favorite openings for a story:

"This is what happened."

I think it's a solid start for a fiction piece, a poem, a nonfiction piece, or a fanfic. King says— and I think he's correct— that it evokes a very specific narrative voice. What characters do you have that would speak this frankly? What kind of story are they telling? Only one way to find out. Write More!

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Hi~ can I share a link to this substack to a writers discord that broke off from nano?

I would be absolutely thrilled if you did!

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So... apparently the NaNoWriMo organization has been gutted and the people at the top now are fully focused on Getting That AI Money.

I have no reason to say this other than Vibes™️ and the way that every other org who has pivoted to AI has behaved but I wouldn't trust anything shared with or stored on their servers not to be scraped for training LLMs. That includes pasting stuff into the site to verify your word count, if that's still a thing. (I haven't done Nano since 2015).

Also of note:

Age gating has been implemented. If you haven't added your date of birth to your profile or if you're under 18, it's supposed to lock you out of local region pages and the forums. ... It's worth noting that the privacy policy on the webpage doesn't specify how that data is stored and may not be GDPR compliant.

...

Camp events are being run solely by sponsors. Events for LGBTQIA+, disabled writers, and writers of color no longer appear to be a thing at NaNo.

Just... go read the whole thing. It's not that long. Ugh.