Every November, I used to count on NaNoWriMo like a life raft. Not because I wanted to win. Not because I thought I’d write the next Great American Novel in 30 days. But because it gave me structure. A shape to wrap around my otherwise formless time. A fake but sacred deadline. A word count bar that moved. A map, a ritual, a reason to open the damn document.
And then it faded.
NaNoWriMo didn’t disappear entirely, but it sort of… disintegrated. The forums got quieter. The hashtags less electric. The energy, the accountability, the community—they all scattered into the wind. And for neurodivergent people like me, that loss hit harder than I expected.
We Weren’t Just Playing Writer
We were writing with scaffolding. And without it, everything collapses.
Executive dysfunction is a hungry beast. It eats my attention, my memory, my momentum. I can want to write—burn to write—and still stare at a blinking cursor for hours, paralyzed by a combination of perfectionism, fatigue, and vague existential dread. NaNoWriMo gave us fake rules to trick our brains into action. It created stakes, even if they were imaginary.
The truth is, I don’t have the kind of brain that finishes things for fun. I need external structure like a house needs walls. NaNoWriMo was one of the few times a year I could write without shame. It was supposed to be messy. It was okay to fall behind, to write garbage, to sprint with strangers into the void. It made the chaos feel purposeful.
Now? I flounder.
Why Neurodivergent Writers Are More Dependent on Systems Like This
Because we often can’t self-motivate the way neurotypicals do. We need deadlines. We need guardrails. We need to feel like we’re not doing this alone. Not out of insecurity—but because our executive functioning systems are cracked, jagged, leaky pipes that don’t hold pressure.
NaNoWriMo—despite its flaws—was one of the few big, collective events that embraced neurodivergent creativity without demanding polish or perfection. It gave us permission to write badly. To start over. To exist in a bubble of communal effort that didn’t require us to show our faces or explain ourselves.
And for many of us, that meant everything.
So Where Did It Go?
Technically? Nowhere. The site still exists. The badges are still there. But the cultural moment—the momentum—that drove NaNoWriMo felt like it died quietly in the shadow of pandemics, burnout, and algorithmic rot. Social media platforms lost the intimacy they once had. We no longer live on Twitter. Discords splintered. Threads drifted.
And with that splintering, the silent accountability disappeared. The idea that someone might ask you how your novel’s going, or cheer you on, or notice your daily word count badge—gone.
What Now?
I don’t know. I wish I had an answer. I wish I had a replacement. I’ve tried gamified apps, writing sprints, group chats. Some help. Most don’t. What I really want is someone to say: “Hey. It’s November. Let’s write again. I’ll sit in the void with you. You don’t have to explain your plot or your characters. Just type.”
If that’s you—if you’re also grieving a structure that held your brain together for one magical, exhausting month a year—I see you. I’m with you. Let’s rebuild something. Or mourn what we lost. Or just say it out loud: I can’t do it without scaffolding.
And that doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means you know what you need.