(With apologies to David Letterman)
1. The account exec just brought in a new client–and a project due in two weeks.2. The in-house medical writer’s water broke three weeks early.3. You need a writer with experience in more than two therapeutic areas.4. You need to turn something around in four days–and two of those days are Saturday and Sunday.5.
So you’ve decided to hire a freelance medical writer! Good for you. You’ve Googled “freelance medical writer,” gone to the American Medical Writer Association to search its freelance directory, called your friend in the medcom down the road for a recommendation. But how do you know what you’re getting?
Oh sure, the writer you found sounded good on the phone. Her clips looked good. Her resume seemed impressive. But how do you know she doesn’t really suck? After all, by the time the project is due it’s a little late for regret.
Never fear. . . Deb is here. I’m here to tell you the 10 Golden Rules to make sure you not only get the right medical writer for your project today, but one that you can work with for the next 10 projects and beyond.
But have you taken the time to go through the top 10 steps to making sure you get the most out of our relationship? After all, time is money. You don’t want to waste either.
The heavens must be aligned today because I’ve been reminded three times in the past few hours of the importance of copy editors.
For those who don’t know what a copy editor is let me just say this: A good copy editor is to a piece of writing what the Secret Service is to the President: protection of the most profound type. She (and most are women) stands between excellent writing and disaster. She is the one who asks if you really meant to say that direct medical costs for asthma in the United States are $11 million a year, or $11 billion a year (the latter). She is the one who realizes you skipped a reference and now none of your references are in the right place. She is the one who know that you really mean to write multiple sclerosis, not muscular dystrophy.
No matter how many times a writer edits a piece, even, as I do, printing it out and doing a final edit on hard copy or, as my friend Alisa does, reading it out loud, a copy editor will improve our work every single time.
It took me many years to come to realization. … Continue Reading
“Bloomberg News (11/20, Matsuyama) reports, “A spray-on treatment for premature ejaculation may prolong sexual intercourse by as much as five times.” In fact, the drug, known as PSD502, “delayed orgasm by an average of 108 seconds” after one month of treatment, according to a 256-patient trial conducted in Canada, Poland, and the US.”
Hey, a lot can happen in 2 minutes!
A few weeks ago I decided to get my act together and hire an assistant to help with marketing, organization, etc., all the things many freelance medical writers are simply too busy to attend to until, one day, you realize you haven’t had to work a full weekend in 2 months and you begin panicking about your (now normal) workload.
Now, I can thankfully report, I found a wonderful assistant in my friend and marketing maven Katy and I’ve had to work the past two weekends. I do think the recession is fading!
All of which is a long-winded way of saying that Katy informed me right off the bat that I must have a blog.
“But Katy,” I replied. “I’m twittering. Isn’t that enough?”
Apparently not.
So, welcome to my blog. The purpose of which is to give you a peek into the inner sanctum of a medical writer, misspellings, all-nighters, messy desks (see photo below) and all. Although it may get me into trouble, I plan to blog about current controversies in medical writing, including “ghostwriting” and CME funding, issues that, to my mind, have totally gotten out of control.
… Continue Reading