Patricia Pearson on passing the time at her first writing job

As the author of two novels and four nonfiction books including her latest, Opening Heaven's Door, journalist Patricia Pearson has several writing credits under her belt. But when she was 23, her first paying job as a writer saw her drafting letters from Ontario's minister of labour. Read on to find out how she managed to make the hours pass. 

I really didn't have enough letters from the minister of labour to write on a given day, so I kept walking around to the bureaucrats and saying, "Can I help you with something? Is there some research that you want?" But it turns out that in a bureaucracy, everything is fiercely contested and territorial, and no one would give me anything to do. Eventually, I photocopied an entire novel and pretended it was something I was highlighting with a Sharpie, and then just read it at my desk. 

Patricia Pearson's comments have been edited and condensed.