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?")
It’s like the way you’re still technically a Rocky Horror virgin if you’ve only seen it at home and not in a theater before.
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. That being said: 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 computer access is a barrier to entry for participating.
For software, something where files are stored on a local drive is preferable to cloud storage if you have anxiety about files and/or want to be able to access it 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. I would say if you’re using Google Docs, be sure you’re also downloading the files onto a flash drive, too.
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.
Writing truly doesn’t require a high level of technology. People have written things down using clay tablets, stones, papyrus scrolls, fabrics, parchment, etc. 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.
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. When it's creative, it destroys the point of doing it in my opinion.
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. Neither does someone expressing a different opinion than yours (welcome to not having a curated echo chamber here—one of the effects of no algorithm). 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.
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. I was just done with the US after the way NYC has been hot garbage since COVID but I’m also done with Middle America after being taken to small claims court by a hospital while I was re-skilling so I could start things like this business. But now I might stay because a David Bowie impersonator declared his undying love for me. Or I might take him to Europe along with my cat. Who knows. The future is unwritten.
After that experience with the hospital billing catastrophe, I will not censor anything you say about Luigi Mangione in the forums *as long as it’s legal.* Dark humor is not illegal. In fact, dark humor can prevent people from becoming what I call an "Ed Dowd statistic" when they're at their lowest (he's known for talking about Millennial excess deaths). It's healthy, so lean into it.
This idea wasn't because of the things that are legal in the Netherlands?
I mean… that also doesn't hurt. I had the worst date of my entire life go on and on about "you can't just go there because mushrooms are legal" and I was looking at him like... you bloody idiot, just because that's on the list doesn't mean it's THE top reason... and then he's talking about how Germany has dangerous people and I'm thinking... I am losing brain cells talking to this guy... I lived in a squat in Berlin in 2009, it was fine. Him following me to my car after I told him off was probably more risky than anything that happened during my bohemian European squatter phase during the Great Recession.
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? One, it’s easier to get targeted by a structured fraud attempt if you do that instead of just starting an LLC. Two, with a non-profit, you have to do a lot of censoring and tone-policing if you want to get that sweet, sweet grant money. I don’t want that type of golden handcuffs.
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 encourages open communication about 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?
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. I wouldn’t know what to do with it. 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?