The Wayfaring Wordhack

 The following bit of wisdom from The Biggest Mistakes Writers Make When Querying Literary Agents by J. M. Tohline via jongibbs ' weekly "Interesting Blog Posts About Writing - w/e January 7th 2011" entry:

Says agent Amy Boggs, "The bulk of a query should consist of 1) the main character, 2) what happens to complicate their life, 3) what goals they now have in response to that complication, and 4) the main obstacle between them and their goal. That is the cake of the query; everything else is just frosting and sprinkles."

To agent or not to agent?

That is the question we writers pose ourselves.

For my part, I had decided that I *would* agent, but *after* exhausting the markets open to unagented writers first. This was a decision I came to some four years ago when I decided that n'importe the odds of getting published, I wanted to write! Since getting published was--and still is, frankly--the stuff of dreams, I didn't dwell on it that much or really come to an informed opinion.

I had absorbed the whispers and declarations that an unpublished author was better getting the first deal herself and then hooking Agent X into representing her in said deal. But after following my friends' quests for agents and reading the thought-provoking posts on the OWW ML apropos the subject, especially the latest one by katallen, I have decided that once I finish The BEAST, I will try to agent it.

So, dream a little dream for me...