5 Tips to Start Your Own Freelance Medical Writing Business

Freelance medical writing can be a lucrative, rewarding, and flexible career. Yet even if you have been writing professionally for years, you may have questions when it comes to how to create a solid client base and find steady work. The following tips can help you start your own freelance medical writing business.

3 Steps to Showcasing Your Medical Writing Career

This article is based on content written by Kelly Schrank, MA, ELS, and presented by John West Hadley at the AMWA Medical Writing & Communication Conference. It was originally published in the AMWA Journal.

Making sure you move ahead in your medical writing career calls for finding opportunities to create visibility for your skills and achievements and presenting yourself and your work in the best light. This means showcasing your value not only to potential new employers and clients, but also to your current employer in order to justify your salary and position yourself for advancement.

A structured and systematic approach can be effective, starting with these three steps.

Asking the Right Questions: Developing Better Discovery Skills

This article was originally published in the AMWA Journal.

All of us have suffered the consequences of expensive, unasked questions in both our professional lives and our personal lives. As medical communicators, we must ask good questions to elicit information, but many of us lack adequate training in this skill. Add to that the natural reticence of some medical communicators, and it is no wonder that we walk away from interviews with subject matter experts or client meetings wishing we had remembered to ask X, Y, or Z. This article offers information as to why questions are so important, what types of questions are useful, how to strategize your questions, how to handle people answering the questions you ask them, and how to answer questions that others ask you.

What Are Soft Skills and Why Are They Important?

This article was originally published in the AMWA Journal.

You can write. That’s why they want you. You have experience writing the types of materials they need: regulatory documents, continuing medical education activities, promotional education materials, journal articles. That’s why they want you. You specialize in the central nervous system or metabolic disorders or cancer, and you know all the regulations and guidelines and American Medical Association style rules. That’s why they want you. This experience and training, and these skills, are the technical proficiencies you possess.

Should Freelance Medical Writers Specialize?

This article was written by freelance medical writers Lori De Milto, Elizabeth L. Smith, and Cathryn D. Evans. It was originally published in the AMWA Journal.

Pros and Cons of Specializing

There are good reasons to specialize in certain types of projects and/or therapeutic areas—and good reasons not to specialize. In general, if you’re a new freelance, you should focus more broadly to attract more clients. As you gain experience, you can narrow your focus, which is what I did.

How to Keep a Steady Stream of Jobs as a Freelance Medical Writer

Freelance medical writers tend to develop a roster of trusted clients that they work for consistently. When clients find someone who is reliable, knows their business, and produces high-quality work, they'll stick with them.

But even the busiest and most successful medical writers need to cultivate new business constantly. There are steps you can take to identify new freelance medical writer jobs that are a good fit for you, while keeping up with your current workload.