I'll you let you in on a little secret: I don't spend hours obsessing over queries, polishing each one to Pulitzer-worthy perfection. Most of my queries are written in under an hour, two tops if it's a really meaty topic or top-tier market. Why? There are tons of reasons why editors reject queries and most of them are out of my control. Half the time it feels like my email goes into a giant black hole, so it doesn't really matter how sparkling my prose or brilliant my idea. I try not to get too attached to one query (it's too emotionally draining) and focus on having several ideas circulating at once to up my odds. And so far, I'm not doing too badly at this numbers game. I follow my instincts, give query drafts a quick read for typos or other mistakes, then send those babies out in cyberspace and hope for the best. Part of this is practice: once you've written enough queries you know how to pull out the salient points and catch an editor's attention quickly. How long do you spend on queries? Do you focus on quality or quantity? Do tell! UPDATE: A colleague sent me this article on the science of pitching magazines. It's written by a journalism prof whose features have appeared in Wired, The NY Times, and The New Yorker, so she clearly knows her stuff. And much of her advice is the exact opposite of what I wrote above! I'd be very reluctant to send a "pre-pitch" to a busy editor or spend hours conducting exploratory interviews, but I'm mainly pitching service pieces and she's pitching features. So I guess it also depends on the nature of your stories, too. Flickr photo courtesy of RBerteig