So, what do you really do all day?

I was filling out a Q&A interview with a magazine and one of the questions amused me: "you read queries all day-what catches your eye?"

I don't read queries all day. I read them for about 20 minutes a day, if that. Partials and fulls, sure, those take up some time, but the actual first step with a query letter is pretty fast.

So, if I'm not reading query letters, what am I doing?

Today I was doing something you don't hear much about: copyright clearance. Normally the author would do this but in this case it fell to me. I'd sent off letters to the New York Times and Advertising Age with all the particulars of what we wanted to use.

To my utter horror, these skinflints wanted $250 a pop to quote things like obituaries! I don't think so! Even worse, the magazines were writing about my author himself, and wanted money for him to quote articles on himself. No no no and really no.

Enter the dreaded phrase "write around". That's what I did for a couple hours tonight--give the same info in my own words (that sound enough like the author to be his words) and don't use the same words or even very close rendition of the article's words.

Fortunately my misspent youth in the halls of academia trained me well for this.