Frequently Asked Questions
Mostly based on things I've been asked repeatedly for a year now every time I brought up my business idea.
Is this only for amateur novelists or can anyone join?
The “main event” here is the NaNoWriMo style challenge, but it’s certainly open to anyone who wants to write! That includes things like short story writers, script writers, poets, journalists, and even content creators and game masters. If you generally vibe with free expression and community built around writing, welcome aboard!
Hardware and software recommendations for participants?
NoctuWriMo’s site technically follows modern accessibility norms and responsive design, but it’s intended for a computer screen. (Homer Simpson: "They have the internet on computers now?"). A mobile app is currently in the research and development phase, by popular demand, however!
However, browsing forums on a larger screen with a full keyboard is something I would recommend. It's a retro experience from a time when the most advanced phones people owned were Nokias and Blackberries. The internet was a place you went to, like the Fae Realm. Computers are much more affordable now than they were in 2002, when many participants were still using typewriters or pen and paper because their access to computers was limited. By 2011, even the punks who hopped freight trains to Zuccotti Park in NYC could walk into an Apple Store near Union Square and get online. Libraries have free access to computers. Chromebooks are so cheap that public schools hand them out to children who are almost guaranteed to break them at some point. I don’t think an inability to access computers is the reason why people want a phone app for this.
I also recommend using a physical hard drive in addition to cloud storage if you have anxiety about files and/or want to be able to access your materials 20 years from now. I lost files that were on my 2017 Chromebook but still have the NaNoWriMo dares that were on a 2003 Windows XP computer.
If you want a fully immersive, authentic 2000s experience, I recommend getting an actual Windows XP laptop off eBay and air-gapping it (in other words, you never use the internet on it, all files get transferred through physical disks and drives). That way, you can run RoughDraft 3 and Winamp! You can even still download Winamp skins. I don’t have any partnerships with fancy software providers, but I love the UX design of RoughDraft 3 enough to own a vintage computer to run it. The visual style and function of RoughDraft 3 is one of the influences on the app that is now in progress.
Writing truly doesn’t require a high level of technology though - mobile or computer. People have written things down using clay tablets, stones, papyrus scrolls, fabrics, parchment, etc. Odds are, you don't need AI for it - humans wrote and told stories for thousands of years without that. One of the old dares was to glue pasta to paper to write your novel. It’s not “ableist” to reject unnecessary technological interventions with your process. If you truly need accommodations, you probably use things like voice to text in other avenues of life already and this is no different. Use what works and what you're comfortable with.
Not everyone wins a 30-day 50k word challenge. That’s always been true. Not everyone climbs Mount Everest either.
How will you prevent people from using AI to write their novels?
Like entering your hand-written word count estimate in 2002 to win NaNoWriMo, this is on the honor system. But there’s no real reason to cheat. In 2002, the prize for “winning” was the experience and the chaotic manuscript you produced. This is essentially no different in 2026. The point of participating is the experience of writing and connecting with other creatives.
Sure, you could have an AI do it for you. But why would you? Do you also want the AI to eat your food for you? Listen to your playlist for you? Pet your cat for you? Smoke your clove cigarette for you? Make love to your partner/friend with benefits/bad decision of the night for you?
Let the AI handle the “mask” you need for the normie internet—that’s something that saves time and lowers cognitive load, which frees you up for more fun stuff. Literally, people who have been targeted by scammers are advised to use AI to apply to jobs for them to reduce stress and anxiety. When you need to do something corporate, using AI is like running a robot vacuum instead of picking up individual grains of dust by hand. That'll give you more time for writing and being a forum rat.
How will you enable free expression on here? Isn't that dangerous? WON'T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?
I have already consulted a lawyer on how to make this site compliant with GDPR guidelines and content moderation for the EU. We’re good as long as people report *literally* illegal activity such as threats of violence or terrorism. No, fictional threats against fictional characters don’t count. The old forums were full of threads where people were killing off characters and making dark jokes about it. Since this was the era of the Patriot Act, we also made self-aware jokes about greeting the FBI agents who were tracking us while we did this. The was years before people like Edward Snowden validated those jokes.
Having your feelings get hurt is also not illegal, although we will ban truly egregious trolls.
SEX CAULDRON? I THOUGHT THEY CLOSED THAT PLACE DOWN! I mean… you won’t need to censor spicy content?
This site is strictly 18+ only to let adults to freely express themselves without needing to censor anything. It’s not family friendly. The kids have other sites they can go to. Or better yet, they can be doing something not involving a screen at all. Erotic content is not the point of this (there's other sites for that), but it's not banned - it's part of the free expression vibe of the Olde Internet.
Please follow common sense guidelines like the ones on Literotica if you're going to post excerpts of erotica.
How will you be sure participants are over 18?
Easy, adult users will click the box declaring themselves an adult. I checked with a lawyer who’s based in the Netherlands and works with American expats on data and privacy law. She says it’s fine; this is a small community and she’s not going to waste my money or her time over-engineering this. Cheers to Marta for giving us the green light!
Wait… why did you choose a Dutch lawyer for this instead of an American one?
Mostly because I looked into getting a DAFT (Dutch American Friendship Treaty) visa. What can I say, it was 2025 and I had been so stressed out by both sides of the culture war in the US that I aggressively avoided reading the news and installed a newsfeed eradicator. I ended up not making the move because the housing market is obscene over there and I needed to stay in the US, but my DuoLingo streak for learning Dutch is still going. It was also the process of researching the DAFT visa that helped me catch someone committing structured fraud, which is how I found help and resources to recover from what was happening.
The TL;DR: I wanted to lean on a society that feels more stable.
Why is there a paywall for the forums?
In the 2000s, SomethingAwful minimized trolling by doing this. The price of admission is necessary to pay the troll-slayer. It also shows that people have “skin in the game” if they choose to join a forum. Kind of like paying dues to join SAG-AFTRA, going through ritual humiliation to join a fraternity or whacking someone to join the mob.
Also, I’m not a charity. Literally. You know what the problems are with running a non-profit? It’s easier to get targeted by a structured fraud attempt if you do that instead of just starting an LLC.
Also, if you see the guy who attempted the structured fraud thing on me when I first tried to start this business, feel free to kick him in the nuts and tell him he’s a pathetic loser if the FBI isn’t doing that already. Imagine being such an awful human being that someone who supported Chelsea Manning at her sentencing and laughs at the gallows humor around Luigi Mangione goes to the FBI over the nonsense you pulled. It would be like having Bender from “Futurama” call the cops you’ve crossed the line so much. Those are the people who prey on non-profits. Maybe the arts should just be careers instead of charity cases? Yes? (Advice to any teenagers who think they want to major in art right now: make it a double major with something practical like education or marketing. Trust me.)
Why U no take Paypal?
Because I still haven't forgiven them for what they did to April Winchell.
How do I stay anonymous on here?
Lying by omission.
Or, more specifically: how much you want to lie by omission is up to you. This isn’t LinkedIn. No one needs to know where you live or work. Let the robots handle that stuff for you.
No one will know anything about you that you didn’t post yourself.
I’m not Mark Zuckerberg. I’m a 2002 NaNoWriMo winner with access to Adobe Dreamweaver and a lot of experience living in the margins of society. Even if I wanted to collect your data, I don’t know how to. I think Claude even finds my confusion exasperating when I ask it questions about WordPress while too sleep-deprived to actually follow directions.... which is why this place needs a WordPress expert! I wouldn’t know what to do with your data is my point. I’m also not advertising anything other than my own paywalled forums and merch. This works the same way things did in the 2000s.
Can I just write the same word 50,000 times?