Many cities have local meet-ups, where you can talk with others who are writing and maybe write with them. You look for a local meeting on the NaNoWriMo forums. You can find other support there, too. One form of support available is a series of Adopt A . . . threads. The following is something that I posted to an Adopt a god thread.
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If you are writing urban fantasy, I give you Dead Yans Puy.
He appears as a very cheerful eight inch tall zombie, with his zombie-tude
ranging from just a little dead looking to nearly skeletal, depending on how
revered he has been lately. He hides behind things on your desk and chuckles.
For Dead Yans Puy (pronounced: poo-ee) is the god of really
good webcomics that update erratically and not nearly often enough. You know
the ones. You know there's not going to be an update this week. There hasn't
been an update in months, now. But the comic is just sooo good, and the link is
right there in your bookmarks. And you'd feel like you had betrayed yourself if
you waited and found out later that it had unexpectedly updated.
So you click every day. When you see that un-updated home
page, then is the time to worship Dead Yans Puy in the manner that he craves.
You must shake both fists over your head, arch your back, screw shut your eyes,
and yell heavenward, "Damn you, Dead Yans Puy!" This is music to the
giggling little freak's ears.
I know this is going to sound like a chain letter. But the
first group that I preached to were skeptical, and drug their feet. But within a
month of the Great Call becoming a habit among them (as a joke, I assume- Yans
does not care about belief) Erfworld had returned to twice weekly updates. The
artist and writer are still limping a bit, but the text fillers are well
written and my now-converted worshippers are not going to slide into apostasy.
We will get there.
More recently, The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and
Babbage has begun updating three times a week. It's never updated three times a
week. And I would have been willing to click daily on that comic for years in
the hopes of seeing more of it. I thought our frustration-devouring little
deviant (insulting him is also taken as praise - go figure) would never let
that one go. It was an unexpected triumph and a shining proof to believers.
Now for the stick part of the chain letter analogy. My
little group may have been bellowing benedictions to the malignant and mangy
manikin, but the rest of you haven't been. He's getting a little annoyed with how
slowly his worship is spreading. He's taken to cutting artists' hands. Both
Order of the Stick and Questionable Content have had hiatuses due to hand
injuries. Although Questionable Content may have been the work of a mimic
deity. I suspect the Shouting Bird.
Please. I beg you. Take up the cry. We had gotten Goblins
back up to twice weekly, and last week Thunt's connection refused to upload.
I'm scared. I know he's a miniscule jerk of a god, but these are great
webcomics. They brighten the day and gladden the heart and uplift the mind.
(Fortunately, XKCD seems to be immune. I suspect that's because Randall Munroe
is a physicist. They're resistant to small gods.) Don't risk sending more good
webcomics into stuttering delay! Curse him today! Curse him often!
We're all counting on you.
(Sorry if I got a little personally involved. This hits me
close to home.)
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