Update on all things writerly

Alas, Brokeback Mountain is not playing anywhere in my neck of the woods. I'm hoping it will get here soon, but until then I'll have to wait to continue my earlier discussion. Instead I've decided to give a little update on what's been going on with my writing!

I decided to combat my impatience over waiting to hear back from one agent by preparing my stuff to send to another one. I figure it can't hurt to have my work circulating among several people. Plus it gives me a higher probability of having one of them be interested! So I found another agency that I liked the look of. I've been very diligent in terms of researching different ones. I don't want to apply to any agents who are *huge* in the business, because they already have famous authors and probably very little time to deal with newbies. I also want to make sure the agent I pick likes paranormals and has at least one author on their roster that I like. If they work with people I don't like or have no interest in, I don't think they'll understand or be interested in my style or my narrative. I suppose that's probably pretty basic logic, but when I first started looking into the myriad literary agents out there it really forced me to think more particularly about what it was I wanted in an agent. Now, I'm hoping that will pay off soon! In the morning I'm getting ready to send out my query to this second agency and we'll see what happens. They indicate they have a one month review process, so I should hear back fairly quickly. Hurrah!

I've been making some headway with novel 2, but have run into a plotting conundrum. I'm not quite sure what I want to happen in the scene I've currently arrived at and how to segue into the next one most effectively. I've just introduced a new character and I need to set him up properly. This is fun, but requires me to go back to my plot notes and figure out what precisely I want to do with him. He'll be playing a relatively small role in this book, but will reappear in book 3 so I need to have him fully figured out early on. I think I'm up to the challenge though, especially now that winter break is here! Huzzah! No school! I still need to grade student papers (it sucks to be a poorly paid TA) and submit final grades for my class, but then I'm home free. Well...not entirely. I'm *supposed* to be working on my dissertation. Instead I seem to be devoting more time to novel writing. Escapism perhaps? I think so. But I have already promised my committee a draft of my next dissertation chapter in January, so I will get on it. Soon. I must graduate in 2007!