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But the administrative stuff is inescapable in the magazine business, especially when you're breaking in. Ask Erika Blauch '99, who as assistant to the editor of Boston magazine goes through mail, answers phones when the editor, Craig Unger, is out, keeps tabs on travel and other expenses, maintains a computer file of "a million Boston magazine contacts" and does all the other things that make an assistant indispensable to the rest of the staff. "I often feel like I'm the mom," Blauch said. "It's a weird thing because I'm also the youngest."

At 23, she already is a veteran of book publishing (Oxford University Press in New York) and is gradually getting bigger and better assignments. In fact, she interrupted this interview to run though the writing she was doing: table of contents, press releases, 300-word news items, shorts on arts and entertainment. Blauch was doing research and writing for August's annual "Best of Boston" issue ("If you ever wonder who decides what the best is, it's me") and was excited about writing a 500-1,000-word sidebar for a July article about ski areas that have gone four season: "I really played up the whole 'Hey, I went to school in Maine. I know lots of people who ski.'"

Five hundred words might not seem like much, not for someone like Blauch, who crafted short stories as a creative writing/English major and wrote thousands of words for a paper called "Women, Men and Chivalry in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." But writing in college and writing for your livelihood are very different things. At her cubicle in the magazine's offices in the former Horticultural Hall, across from Symphony Hall, Blauch said she thinks she now knows what she wants to do: be a regular contributor or editor for a national magazine. And that is no small realization. "That I could actually have a career out of writing," Blauch said. "I don't think I really believed."