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Thursday, January 26, 2012
What Makes This Medical Editor Tick
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Thursday, January 12, 2012
Sprints: Freelancing with a Baby or Toddler Around
Have you ever wondered what it takes to juggle self-employment as an editorial professional with parenting of a baby or toddler? In this guest post on the blog of freelancer—and mother-to-be—Andrea Altenburg, I tell you how I did it.
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Monday, January 09, 2012
You Just Never Know
Now, this is seriously cool.
On every public holiday in their respective countries and at the end of each year, I e-mail my 60-plus biomedical-journal authors who are non-native speakers of English, even the ones I've worked with only once, to wish them a good holiday and thank them for choosing me as their editor. And for the new year, I usually snail-mail greeting cards to them. They all like this.
Well, okay, now that the expository paragraph is out of the way, here's the cool part:
In March 2010, I e-mailed all of my authors in Japan to ask whether they were okay after the earthquake and tsunami. One of the authors who didn't reply is one for whom I last edited a manuscript in 2005. I was left wondering whether he was hurt or dead or instead was just too busy to answer my message. But late last night, he e-mailed me; the subject line reads "Long time no see." He used my 2010 message as a starting point to contact me to ask me to edit his latest manuscript.
This little adventure illustrates my belief that self-employed editorial professionals should never give up on hearing from past clients, because some of them may save our e-mails, waiting till they need our services to reply. Just keep on contacting them.
Updated at 11:4 a.m., January 10, 2012: My long-lost author has agreed to my project fee and a February editing start date. Hurray!
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On every public holiday in their respective countries and at the end of each year, I e-mail my 60-plus biomedical-journal authors who are non-native speakers of English, even the ones I've worked with only once, to wish them a good holiday and thank them for choosing me as their editor. And for the new year, I usually snail-mail greeting cards to them. They all like this.
Well, okay, now that the expository paragraph is out of the way, here's the cool part:
In March 2010, I e-mailed all of my authors in Japan to ask whether they were okay after the earthquake and tsunami. One of the authors who didn't reply is one for whom I last edited a manuscript in 2005. I was left wondering whether he was hurt or dead or instead was just too busy to answer my message. But late last night, he e-mailed me; the subject line reads "Long time no see." He used my 2010 message as a starting point to contact me to ask me to edit his latest manuscript.
This little adventure illustrates my belief that self-employed editorial professionals should never give up on hearing from past clients, because some of them may save our e-mails, waiting till they need our services to reply. Just keep on contacting them.
Updated at 11:4 a.m., January 10, 2012: My long-lost author has agreed to my project fee and a February editing start date. Hurray!
clients marketing copyeditor copyediting editor editing medical editing medical journals publishing EditorMom
Friday, December 30, 2011
Friday, September 23, 2011
The Copyeditors' Knowledge Base Has Moved
Editorial professionals, this post is for you.
As part of the conversion of my business web site from HTML to PHP, the Copyeditors' Knowledge Base has moved. After you update your bookmarks, you'll want to check out all of the helpful sections within it:
If you know of any items that should be added to the knowledge base, please e-mail me with links to information about them.
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As part of the conversion of my business web site from HTML to PHP, the Copyeditors' Knowledge Base has moved. After you update your bookmarks, you'll want to check out all of the helpful sections within it:
If you know of any items that should be added to the knowledge base, please e-mail me with links to information about them.
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Monday, September 12, 2011
How to Find Medical Editing Freelance Work
As a self-employed medical editor, I'm often asked how freelancers can find medical editing work. This topic came up recently on the Freelance e-mail list (also called the Publishing Industry Freelancers list) and in a discussion within the Freelance Editing Network, a LinkedIn group. Today I'm sharing with you both my response in those discussions and the response of my colleague Susan London.
My Advice
First, see the Toolkit for New Medical Writers; it applies to medical editors too.
To develop a clientele in medical editing, you may want to contact the managing editors of various medical journals to pitch your services to them. There are plenty of places online where you can find lists of medical journals so that you can then hunt down their web sites to find contact info, including these:
I also suggest that you consider joining the American Medical Writers Association (AMWA); it counts medical editors among its members, including me. The AMWA web site has lots of excellent resources for both medical editors and medical writers. Its private e-mail lists are great for networking and learning from colleagues, and members who are freelancers can purchase an entry in the web site's freelance directory. You can also follow AMWA on Twitter. And once you are a confirmed member of AMWA, you can join the AMWA LinkedIn group.
There is a large market, for those who are persistent, in doing medical editing for researcher-authors who are non-native speakers of English and need their journal-article manuscripts polished before submission to U.S. and UK journals. See the article "Building Good Relationships with ESL Authors" (PDF) from Science Journal, the publication of the Council of Science Editors (CSE).
Susan's Advice
In response to my post to the Freelance e-mail list, Susan posted some additional helpful information, and she gave me her permission to share it with others as long as I credited her. So here's what she posted to that list:
What Katharine said! All great advice. I'd add just a few things.
The Council of Science Editors also has a Job Bank open to all.
The National Association of Science Writers (NASW) has many medical writers and editors among its ranks, a great freelance discussion list open to all, and job postings for members.
The Board of Editors in the Life Sciences (BELS) also occasionally posts job opportunities for members.
A wonderful medical writer, Emma Hitt, sends out a list of medical writing and editing jobs weekly (the HittList), although it goes out to hundreds (maybe thousands now) of subscribers, so standing out is hard.
[If you are] interested in a certain genre of medical writing or editing, [you] might want to look into organizations specific to that area, such as the Association of Health Care Journalists, mainly for reporters and feature writers.
I'm still a big fan of cold calling, as hard as it can be. Just prepare a brief pitch, research some companies, and give them a call and be sure to get to a top person in publications. The worst that happens is they decline. In that case, always ask (1) if they know of someone else who might be looking for a medical writer or editor and (2) if you could send along a résumé for them to keep on file should their needs change.
As with all types of freelance writing and editing, you have to get a foot in the door, [and] then things get easier.
Your Advice?
If you're a medical editor, what advice would you add?
freelancing finding work medical copyeditor medical editor editing publishing EditorMom
My Advice
First, see the Toolkit for New Medical Writers; it applies to medical editors too.
To develop a clientele in medical editing, you may want to contact the managing editors of various medical journals to pitch your services to them. There are plenty of places online where you can find lists of medical journals so that you can then hunt down their web sites to find contact info, including these:
- Instructions to authors for more than 6,000 peer-reviewed journals in the health and life sciences (from the Mulford Health Science Library of the University of Toledo)
- PubMed and NCBI Molecular Biology Database journals (download text-only files listing information about biomedical journals indexed in PubMed and the NCBI Molecular Biology Database, to search them for journal-name abbreviations; NCBI is the National Center for Biotechnology Information of the U.S. National Library of Medicine)
I also suggest that you consider joining the American Medical Writers Association (AMWA); it counts medical editors among its members, including me. The AMWA web site has lots of excellent resources for both medical editors and medical writers. Its private e-mail lists are great for networking and learning from colleagues, and members who are freelancers can purchase an entry in the web site's freelance directory. You can also follow AMWA on Twitter. And once you are a confirmed member of AMWA, you can join the AMWA LinkedIn group.
There is a large market, for those who are persistent, in doing medical editing for researcher-authors who are non-native speakers of English and need their journal-article manuscripts polished before submission to U.S. and UK journals. See the article "Building Good Relationships with ESL Authors" (PDF) from Science Journal, the publication of the Council of Science Editors (CSE).
Susan's Advice
In response to my post to the Freelance e-mail list, Susan posted some additional helpful information, and she gave me her permission to share it with others as long as I credited her. So here's what she posted to that list:
What Katharine said! All great advice. I'd add just a few things.
The Council of Science Editors also has a Job Bank open to all.
The National Association of Science Writers (NASW) has many medical writers and editors among its ranks, a great freelance discussion list open to all, and job postings for members.
The Board of Editors in the Life Sciences (BELS) also occasionally posts job opportunities for members.
Katharine interrupting here: And, I add, BELS offers certification of applicants' skills as editors in the life sciences through a rigorous 3-hour examination. I have this certification, and it has made my services more desirable to some clients.
A wonderful medical writer, Emma Hitt, sends out a list of medical writing and editing jobs weekly (the HittList), although it goes out to hundreds (maybe thousands now) of subscribers, so standing out is hard.
[If you are] interested in a certain genre of medical writing or editing, [you] might want to look into organizations specific to that area, such as the Association of Health Care Journalists, mainly for reporters and feature writers.
I'm still a big fan of cold calling, as hard as it can be. Just prepare a brief pitch, research some companies, and give them a call and be sure to get to a top person in publications. The worst that happens is they decline. In that case, always ask (1) if they know of someone else who might be looking for a medical writer or editor and (2) if you could send along a résumé for them to keep on file should their needs change.
As with all types of freelance writing and editing, you have to get a foot in the door, [and] then things get easier.
Your Advice?
If you're a medical editor, what advice would you add?
freelancing finding work medical copyeditor medical editor editing publishing EditorMom
Friday, August 12, 2011
Do Freelance Editorial Professionals Keep 9-to-5 Schedules?
One of the big attractions of self-employment is the ability to set your own work hours. The variety of schedules that freelance editorial pros keep is quite large, as shown by a discussion this week on the Copyediting-L e-mail list. What freelancers' schedules look like depends on their workload; their clients' needs; their circadian rhythms; whether they must accommodate the needs of life partners, children, aging parents, and/or pets; and the activities they're involved in outside of work.
I'm sharing my general schedule here in hopes of helping other freelancers see the possibilities and inspiring them to share their schedules in the comments section.
Several factors affect my schedule because they require my attention:
So here's my approximate weekday schedule:
Even with a work schedule that spreads widely across the day, I answer e-mails and phone calls from U.S. clients only between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. on weekdays, to help me separate my work life from my home life. But I do make some exceptions for my authors in other nations; I sometimes answer their e-mails in the evening or early morning because of the time-zone difference.
So, colleagues, what's your schedule like, given your lifestyle and personal and work needs?
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I'm sharing my general schedule here in hopes of helping other freelancers see the possibilities and inspiring them to share their schedules in the comments section.
Several factors affect my schedule because they require my attention:
- I'm married.
- I have a 9-year-old son and a 16-year-old son.
- I have an adult daughter who visits us, with her husband and my 4-year-old granddaughter, on some weekends.
- My husband, a cabinetmaker, is self-employed like me. Periodically, I take time away from my work to help him with his project estimates, because I'm better at estimating time than he is, and to write up his estimates and help him with customer e-mails, because effective writing is one of my skills rather than one of his.
- My in-laws live in the downstairs apartment within my home.
- There are 2 dogs and 1 cat in my home.
So here's my approximate weekday schedule:
- ~7:30–10 a.m.: Eat breakfast in my office, while I alternate between helping my husband get the boys out the front door (if it's during the school year) and doing workday-startup tasks:
- Read and respond to e-mails.
- Do my Facebook rounds for the following people or groups: the Board of Editors in the Life Sciences ([BELS] I'm one of the page administrators), the Council of Science Editors ([CSE] I'm one of the admins), members of my extended family, me, and friends and colleagues.
- Do my Twitter rounds for accounts held by the following: BELS (I'm on its Twitter team), CSE (I'm on its Twitter team), KOK Edit.
- Create proposals and invoices for projects as necessary.
- Review my calendar items for the day.
- ~10 a.m.: Shower.
- ~11 a.m.: Start editing the first project of the day.
- ~12:30 p.m.: Eat lunch.
- ~1 p.m.: Get back to work.
- ~7 p.m.: Knock off work and eat dinner, unless I'm facing a dire deadline. If it's a deadline night, stop for dinner and then go back to work till ~10:30 p.m.
- ~Throughout the day:
- Answer client e-mails and e-mails from colleagues and mentees; spot-check profession-related e-mail lists; spot-check Facebook walls for BELS, CSE, and me; spot-check Twitter for BELS, CSE, and KOK Edit.
- Write up project estimates for my husband's cabinetmaking business when necessary and edit his e-mails to clients.
- Brew multiple cups of tea.
- Pet and/or play with my dog.
- Take breaks with my husband and my kids or go flop on the hammock under the giant old maple tree in my backyard (in warm weather).
- Make sure that my sons are on track for chores, for music practice (for the one who plays the cello), and for homework if it's during the school year.
Even with a work schedule that spreads widely across the day, I answer e-mails and phone calls from U.S. clients only between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. on weekdays, to help me separate my work life from my home life. But I do make some exceptions for my authors in other nations; I sometimes answer their e-mails in the evening or early morning because of the time-zone difference.
So, colleagues, what's your schedule like, given your lifestyle and personal and work needs?
freelancing editing copyeditor schedule workday work–life balance EditorMom
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