It’s been 5 years since my last post. Many reasons why, but I’m going with the story that my website and blog just fell to the bottom of the to-do list. Then got covered with a pile of papers. Then gathered dust. Lots of dust. I have been a freelance biomedical writer and editor since …
It’s a cliché, but it’s true – freelancing is a rollercoaster. It’s taken a while for me to accept that reality and go with it. When I’m busy, my projects can start to feel like a relentless avalanche. When I’m not, I start to feel a little lost. When I’m busy, I remind myself that …
So 2014. I started the year off in a panic. November and December were dismal and I was sure that this was the final downslope on the freelance rollercoaster. That there would never be another upswing. I don’t think I will ever get comfortable with the ebb and flow of freelancing. I love the freedom, …
So I had an okay 2013. Didn’t do worse than 2012, but that’s not exactly an inspiring achievement. Plus, the end of the year was pretty slow. Scary slow. So it gave me plenty of time to think about what I am doing and how I am doing it. The majority of my clients are …
I have been meaning to do this post for a while, but finally got down to it after reading an excellent post describing substantive editing, and another post on the importance of building off your unique set of skills and background. For some reason, I’ve often struggled to describe exactly what I do, beyond saying …
So a long time ago, I wrote a post on the importance of finding a niche. It’s important, otherwise you run the risk of overextending yourself, maybe taking jobs that don’t quite fit your particular skill set and getting paid relatively little as a consequence of climbing the learning curve. However… I have also been struggling …
I’ve been a full-time freelance writer/editor for a few years now, and a part-timer for a decade before that. Feels like I should have the pricing issues worked out, right? Nope. At the moment it feels as if I have hit a wall – pricing is tied to the growth of my business, and as …
It’s been a while – I’ve been busy. That’s an understatement, actually. I’ve been swamped. Overloaded. Overbooked. Overwhelmed. You get the picture. I don’t know what happened, but my schedule somehow went bonkers. Either I need a better project tracking system or I need to remind myself more often how many hours there are in a …
I hate to admit it, but I didn’t learn to write until I was in college. My freshman year at a liberal arts school was brutal – but by the end of four years, this science major managed to catch up. The difficult memories of writing tutors and tears resurfaced when I read an article in The …
Now that I’ve completed the Writing in the Sciences course on Coursera (and received my official certificate, yay me!), I decided to take a course called Think Again: How to Argue – along with 72,000 other people around the world. As the class moves through week 2, I’m realizing how much the concepts taught in this class apply to …
