Am I the only one who finds the new NaNoWriMo site clunky, uncooperative, and downright annoying? Communication in forums is impossible (I find nothing when I click that link) and with buddies seems challenging (a message from a buddy waited to be read for a week because I didn’t notice it was there). In fact, if this had been the site I used the first time back in 2016, I might not have continued using it, and I have completed and “won” the NaNo November challenge three times and also written in other months. It has been a great comfort to me in years past.

But now . . .

My stats show up erratically. Sometimes NaNo knows this is my fourth November, but sometimes it announces this is my third or first. That’s no big deal. It’s when I try to access people or useful information that I find . . . nothing. Every time I try to access any of the links beyond the actual Help Desk, I get an error message. “Known Issues,” for example, is just one of the links that returns “Login Error.” It’s all downhill from there.

Most of the links I have tried to access return that message. (The exception is that NaNo merchandise links work perfectly, of course.) I don’t even remember how I eventually was able to send a note about these issues to the higher ups over a week ago. They probably clicked on it and their login failed.

I thought my troubles might be because I was using Safari as my browser, but I had the same issues with Chrome.

Some questions were not all that hard to figure out on my own, like how NaNo determines my writing speed, etc. But overall, the updated version of NaNo seems far less intuitive, and communication, and error messages, and trying to access anything. Fortunately, I have my link stored in my computer or I’m not sure I could get to my data at all. Perhaps I should logout and try logging in again? Somehow that sounds like a recipe for disaster, and I won’t try that until I am willing to abandon the whole site.

Gary says, “Any sensible person would have given up by now, but you’re too stubborn.”

I am over halfway through the “challenge” (passed 26k words this morning) but I do not like what I’m writing at all. So this morning my mood would be a bit testy even if the website functioned as I wish it would.

Maybe I will knit the rest of today when I am not walking in the rain. (In case you are thinking that a rainy days sets off my mood—nope. We are always grateful for weather.)

“I sometimes fear that all of humankind may sooner or later come to my conclusion: that reading fiction is a waste of time.”—Isaac Bashevitz Singer

I think fiction is a vital aspect of humanity and Singer was probably having a bad day. Maybe he tried using a website to track his writing progress?

coming soon: declining Bobs