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November 2013
  Issue #50

Fifty is Nifty!  

 

Can you believe it? Fifty issues of Pencil Points! We're feeling pretty nifty (do people still say that?) about our accomplishment, about all the great information we've been able to impart each month, and about all the great friends and followers we've made along the way. While we're never at a loss of what to write about because we're learning and growing every day, we want you to feel welcome to contact us if there's ever a topic or burning question you'd like to see us address.

As we put this issue of Pencil Points to bed, the 73rd Annual Conference of the American Medical Writers Association (AMWA) is in full swing. We're thrilled to be here to see our friends and colleagues and present on a few new topics that are near and dear to our hearts. We're excited, too, that Brian will be inducted as the new President of AMWA on Saturday, and Cyndy is becoming a member of the AMWA Executive Committee, where she will serve as Administrator of the Member Resources Department.

We're big fans of AMWA. We're thankful for the personal and professional growth it has afforded us, the many friendships and insights we have gained, and the opportunities we have received to give back to our industry. If you're attending the conference (one of the best EVER), we hope you're attending one of our sessions. Please be sure to say "hi"! Whether you're reading this issue of Pencil Points while you're here in Columbus, after you get home, or at your home or office now, we have another great issue in store for you.

In [Not] Just for Newbies, we provide a few tips to help empower you to trust your gut the next time a bad opportunity comes along. In The Savvy Marketer, we share social media marketing tidbits we've gleaned from the 2011 AMWA Salary Survey. And in Dollars and Sense we highlight some excellent new tools we've found to help you increase your work efficiency, as well as a few tools we've mentioned before but that may have fallen off your radar. Speaking of radar, in On the Radar this month we have an exciting update about an important and long-anticipated resource we first told you about in Pencil Points Issue #45. Where In the World are we this month? Take a guess!

Wishing you writing success,

 

Cyndy and Brian

The Accidental Medical Writer


PS. We offer more tips and have interesting discussions on our Facebook page. Come and join us.

 
 Newbies[NOT] JUST FOR NEWBIES
Information and Inspiration for New and Experienced Writers 

Trust Your Gut 


If you've been reading Pencil Points for a while or have ever seen us present at a 
conference, you know that we heartily recommend freelances say "yes" to every project opportunity that comes along. It's rare that they really all do come through at once, but sometimes they do, and you end up working your tail off to get it all done. The up side, of course, is that you are getting paid for it, which is much nicer than working on staff and having overtime expected of you without additional financial compensation. But when we recommend you say "yes" to every project, do we really mean every project? No.

To fine-tune our recommendation, we really mean say "yes" to every good opportunity. But how do we know which opportunities will be good and which ones won't? Our gut usually knows the difference, and we've learned to trust our gut. Here are a few tips to help you decipher what your gut may be telling you about a project you should respectfully decline before you end up neck-deep in trouble and wishing you had listened.

A crisis project from a client with whom you've never worked

The phone rings, you answer it, and the person on the other end of the line introduces him or herself as having been referred by a friend who has a friend who knows you. They're caught between a rock and a hard place with nowhere to turn. The project is already a week late and they're short on budget because their "previous writer" never seemed to "get" what the client was asking for.

TIP #1: RUN AWAY! Inability of a writer to "deliver" what the client "wants" could be the writer's deficiency, but it's also a classic sign of a poorly defined project. The client has already blown their deadline and budget, which means there's little time or money for you, and their client probably has even less patience or confidence than they had when they started. Do not become the next in line to fail.

A project with lots of small deliverables, and each one a loser

You receive an email from someone who got your name from your LinkedIn profile or the AMWA Freelance Directory. You don't know them and they don't know you. But have they got a great opportunity! They need three 500-word summaries of relevant new journal articles every week for the next 3 months, or 6 months, or until the end of time. All you need to do is search for relevant new articles in a particular therapeutic area, read them, and write the summaries. And get this--each one pays $500. That's $1500 per week, free and clear, $6000 per month.

TIP #2: RUN AWAY! On the surface, this sounds like a slam-dunk project. But think it through. You've got research time, review time, and writing time. $500 per summary isn't even a dollar a word when you factor in the additional time you'll spend. Having a regular gig is nice, but not if you're losing money on each deliverable. Volume doesn't make up for financial loss. If you were selling widgets, you could simply keep the machine running a little longer to crank out more, and maybe you could save on raw material costs. But medical writing isn't a widget. We create everything from scratch, made to order. Don't let anyone debase or commoditize what you do.

A client who doesn't respect boundaries

 

You're lying on the beach in Cancun, touring the vineyards of Napa Valley, or exploring the ruins of Pompeii. The phone rings. You ignore it, and a message is left. Annoyed, but knowing that not knowing will gnaw at you the rest of the day, you pick up the message. A client (or a potential client; you decide which), has a marvelous opportunity, a project that will keep you busy the rest of the year. "I'm sorry to bother you on vacation," the caller says, "but I need to speak to you for just 15 minutes."

TIP #3: RUN AWAY! Sure you could use the work, and we bet the timing would be perfect--once you get back from vacation. But let's talk about respect. If a client or potential client has no qualms about interrupting you while you're on vacation (or over the weekend or a holiday, for that matter), just to get the job, what will they be like once they own you on the project? This is a bad omen before it even begins. We recommend deleting the message, putting a note on your calendar to call the person when you're back in the saddle, and seeing what develops from there. If there's no interest in you when you get back, they were probably only looking for a warm and willing body from the beginning, and they wouldn't have minded in the least letting you ruin your R+R.

 

 ON THE RADAR
Resources for Medical Writers

DSM-5 Now Available in eBook             

 

In the June issue of Pencil Points (Issue #45) we announced the long-anticipated availability of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) and promised to let you know when the electronic version of the DSM-5 would become available. The electronic version of the DSM-5 is continually updated, so the resource will never go out of date. That's an especially good thing, because there have already been a number of updates and corrections that are posted on the APA DSM-5 website. The electronic version of the new DSM-5 also features links to other valuable American Psychiatric Association (APA) resources.

If you're ready to purchase the new DSM-5--a must-have for anyone writing about mental disorders--you can get the new electronic version here. If you prefer to be able to hold it in your hands and reach for it on your bookshelf, you can also order the new  Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5(TM)) in hardcover or paperback.
  

 

DollarsDOLLARS & SENSE

Advice on the Business of Freelancing 

Tools to Increase Your Efficiency 

  

We're always looking for ways to improve our efficiency. Aren't you? After all, as freelances, the only thing we have to sell is our time. And the more efficient we can be, the more time we have to give to our clients--and the more revenue we can generate.

  

Here are several tools we use. Some we've mentioned before, but we'd like to remind you about them again.

  • Back2Zip: A FREE program you can use to back up your computer system. Back2Zip's infrastructure is provided by Amazon's S3 storage service. Back2zip uses a ZIP-64 engine to create a complete back-up archive of your back-up folders. Periodically Back2zip generates and archives changes you make or new files you add. All files and changes are stored locally in a ZIP-64 container and synchronized with your Amazon S3 (online storage) account.
  • Doodle: Scheduling meetings and teleconferences can be as challenging as herding cats, especially when you're juggling a lot of participants. Doodle is a free service that makes scheduling a snap. You can send a meeting invitation to intended participants that can be connected to their Outlook calendar, and even poll recipients on a number of scheduling options.
  • DoPDF: A free PDF converter that allows you to convert web pages and print documents into PDF documents, without having to buy Adobe Acrobat Standard.
  • Hightail (formerly YouSendIt): A free FTP site that enables you to easily send large data files.
  • Mediafire: Another free file-hosting service that enables transfer of extremely large data files.
  • Paymo Time Tracker: Yes, you need to keep track of your time. How else will you know how much to charge for different deliverables? This program offers time tracking, invoicing, and project management capabilities, with both free and paid versions available. There are also free Paymo apps for iPhones and Android smart phones.
  • PDFUnlock: A free tool that enables you to remove passwords and restrictions on PDF files, so that you can copy and paste, or highlight PDF documents. This is invaluable when highlighting references for submission review.
  • Toggl: A free, nifty time-tracking tool. Use the free version or pay a few bucks a month for additional bells and whistles.

 

WhereWHERE IN THE WORLD ARE BRIAN AND CYNDY?
The Accidental Medical Writer Calendar

 

We're finally here at the AMWA Annual Conference! As you read this issue, we're hard at work in Columbus, OH, networking, teaching, and learning. This conference energizes us and we come back to our offices with new ideas to make our businesses even better. What about you? Does networking with colleagues energize you, too?  If you missed this year's conference, plan to join us next year in Memphis, TN.

 

The AMWA Annual Conference closes out our year as far as teaching goes. But we're already planning our schedules for 2014. If you'd like us to come and speak at an event you're organizing, don't wait too long to contact us. Our schedule is filling fast!

 

Be sure to check out Brian's interview in Breaking Into Medical Writing and Editing by Kristen Fischer that was published online on January 6 by mediabistro.com, a top site for communication professionals who create or work with content. If you're a member of AvantGuild you can access the article for free. If not, there's a $55 annual subscription fee, which gives you access to all the exclusive content the site offers. If you recall, Kristen interviewed Cyndy last year for the Freelance Switch blog, which you can read here. Thanks, Kristen.

 

We frequently speak and teach at medical writing conferences and seminars; we've also been interviewed online. Check out our Webcasts. Brian's interview with Danielle Hampson of The Business Authors Show is also available right on our website!

We would love to present at your next upcoming meeting or event, so invite us!

 

SavvyTHE SAVVY MARKETER
Marketing Tips to Build Your Business 
Social Media Marketing Tidbits from the 2011 AMWA Salary Survey
  

The American Medical Writers Association conducted the most recent salary survey of its members in 2011. And although these data are 2 years old at this point in time, they still provide some interesting insight into how medical writers--and the people who hire them--use social media.

 

Included in the 2011 survey were questions about the social networks to which members belonged and the types of new media members created. According to the results, LinkedIn was the most popular social-media platform used by AMWA members (80%), followed by Facebook (65%), and Twitter (14%). Interestingly, creating content for nonprint media, such as compact discs, podcasts, social media, video, and the Web, accounted for an average of 16% of respondents' paying work that year. How much of this kind of work do you do?

 

Let's compare these results with those of the 2011 Medical Communications Managers survey sponsored by Metri-Mark, Inc. This survey was completed by a small sample of 140 managers and nonmanagers working in some capacity in the medical-communications industry. Among manager respondents, LinkedIn (not surprisingly) was again the social-media platform used most often (37%) to enhance business-related activities and relationships, followed by Twitter (15%), Facebook (13%), and SharePoint (9%). Among nonmanagers, LinkedIn remained in the top spot, used most often by 38% of respondents, followed by Facebook (12%), Twitter (10%), and SharePoint (7%).

 

Despite the popularity of LinkedIn for business networking among medical- communications professionals, including AMWA members, it is interesting to note that 24% and 28% of managers and nonmanagers, respectively, reported never using LinkedIn. Granted, this was a very small sample, and we wonder if those percentages have changed over the past 2 years. We would guess they have.

 

What are the take-away messages here? First, consider LinkedIn as a primary tool you can use to establish and nurture business relationships with colleagues, clients, and potential clients. Secondly, if you have experience writing for nonprint media, flaunt it. It will give you a distinct advantage over writers who have limited experience in this medium.

  
If you're still uncomfortable putting yourself out there on LinkedIn, you might want to check out these publications: 
THE FINE PRINT

 

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