National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo for short, or NaNo for shorter) officially announced its closure this past April, and I’m feeling blindsided.
The announcement wasn’t exactly unprecedented; the organization has been marred by controversies, and last year’s AI scandal caused them to lose not only sponsorships, endorsements, and board members, but thousands of participants including myself. Still, it’s hard to believe such a staple of the writing community is gone.
I wouldn’t have known about the organization’s closure at all if I hadn’t happened upon a post in the forum for Scrivener (a word processing tool I bought using my NaNoWriMo Winner discount). Even when I stumbled upon the news, I still had the NaNo website bookmarked on my browser, and clicked it only to find the site completely defunct.
But there is a bright side. NaNoWriMo never owned the concept of a word count goal, so even though the website is gone, I’m still challenging myself to write this November.
To get started, I set off on a quest to find the best NaNoWriMo replacement. If you’re also scrambling for an alternative, here are some of the many ways you can get writing.
The Roads Not Taken: Most Popular NaNo Alternatives
Both Novel November (run by ProWritingAid) and Reedsy Novel Sprint are following the NaNo formula to a T: 50,000 words of a single project in 30 days. Both challenges are run by companies that make writing software — ProWritingAid is an AI-powered writing assistant, and ReedsyStudio is a newly-rebranded word processor — but they’re free, have some big names behind them, and provide a mountain of resources and workshops to keep you going throughout the month.
Novel November is in the lead to fill the NaNoWriMo void. The site has almost everything NaNo did: a progress tracker, motivational badges, a Scrivener sponsorship, and a dumb nickname (“NovNov”). Personally, Novel November isn’t for me. I haven’t used ProWritingAid, but a few of their features are powered by generative AI, and the fact that they don’t advertise that at all on their landing page makes it feel like they’re hiding it from users.
However, ProWritingAid is easy to install in your existing word processor (like Google Docs or Word), and Novel November will likely garner the most participants. If you’re looking for a large-scale challenge and community, Novel November might be right for you.
Reedsy Novel Sprint 2025 is another new name, with a big prize: the chance to win $5,000 in cash and get a meeting with a literary agent. Reedsy explicitly states that you can’t use AI in your writing process, which is nice, but you’re required to use their word processor (ReedsyStudio) in order to participate. For me, that would mean getting used to a completely new writing software — and giving up my beloved Scrivener — so I already know that won’t happen. But the prize is a pretty cool incentive, so make sure you check it out as a potential option.
My DIY NaNoWriMo Alternative
Since I have no plans to join the above challenges, I’m taking a more DIY approach to NaNoWriMo (or whatever you would like to call it now). November is just two days away, and I’ve set up a few systems to help track my progress and stay active in the writing community.
To track my word count, I’m using TrackBear. TrackBear lets you track any kind of project in any kind of way (words, chapters, pages, lines, etc.), and many writers are using the leaderboard feature to compare their stats with their friends. That’s a lot more flexibility than NaNo ever had, so the site seems to be the most popular among former NaNo participants.
A huge part of NaNoWriMo was the community it created, and I’ve found a good alternative in Discord servers. If you’re interested in joining something similar to meet writers across the globe (and maybe get an accountability buddy), you can find plenty of options on the NaNoWriMo subreddit, which has a designated thread with dozens more NaNoWriMo alternatives.
While NaNoWriMo’s shutdown is sad, it’s already resulted in a lot of good; writers are founding new communities, finding motivation, and keeping the spirit of the challenge alive. I’m excited and nervous to see how this month goes. For everyone else joining their own version of NaNoWriMo — I wish you the best of luck!