My career as a freelance science writer officially began in the middle of my graduate school experience, in about 1999, when I started taking on a few writing jobs on the side. My main focus, of course, was to finish up my experiments and write my dissertation. When I picked up my diploma in May of 2001, I promptly hung up my shingle as a fulltime freelance science writer. I already had about 2-3 writing clients and had been sending out emails and resumes for a couple years at that point, so it was not too big of a stretch to go full time into freelance writing.

Beefing up Business
To beef up my business to a full-time level, I started contacting the clients I already had and told them of my availability. I also got more involved in the National Association of Science Writers (NASW) and the American Medical Writers Association. I found the people on the listservs of those two organizations to be a tremendous source of wisdom, and someone always graciously answered whatever inane questions I had.  I also emailed a lot of potential clients and quickly had enough work to keep me busy full time.

Learning Writing
During those early years, I made it a goal of mine to learn as much as I could about the nuts and bolts of writing. I didn’t want to come across as a “novice” writer to my editors, so I tried to avoid making “novice” writing mistakes. Consequently, in addition to earning a Masters in technical communication at a local college from 1999-2003, I also read many books on writing. This really helped me learn the art of writing and is perhaps not something that every science-PhD-going-into-science-writing necessarily does. It is important, though. Getting a PhD in science without consciously developing one’s writing skills can actually be hazardous to one’s writing style!

About the Money
The money aspect of freelancing was not my concern when I started out. Because of graduate school, I was very used to living on a measly income, and this helped imbue me with a feeling that I could not fail. It would be very easy to surpass what I had been earning as a stipend. However, in 2001, the dot com bubble had just burst and the economy was bad. Then 9/11 happened, which sunk the economy down even further. Of course, the bad economy of 2001 has been waaaaay eclipsed by the 2009 version, but even today, the demand for good medical/science writers has remained mostly unchanged, especially for those with a PhD.

Of note, I have been sending out the HittList, http://www.hittmedicalwriting.com/thehittlist.html, a weekly medical writing jobs email, since 2001, and I have never noticed a big decline in the number of jobs that get sent to me to post over the years. The level has stayed pretty consistent. In fact, more jobs get sent to me now for posting than ever before, although more people know about and subscribe to the HittList, so that might be the reason. Nonetheless, I have always found that encouraging—that there is always a demand for skilled science and medical writing talent. It is important, I believe, when starting out to imagine a plentiful universe. Whatever you expect to happen tends to happen, so it’s important not to have images of earning a meagre income—and many freelancers seem to have this image. It is a fact that medical/science writers with a PhD or MD can easily earn 6 figures if they are halfway competent—this may be in contrast to many of the generalist, non-science freelance writers out there.

Honing Your Talents
In the beginning months as a fulltime science writer, I was very open to taking on various types of writing work.  I had not at that point honed my own personal writing style, nor had I begun to favor any particular specialty. But within a year or so of working fulltime, I had clearly identified that I gravitated towards writing about medicine, specifically cancer, and that I was much better at writing for a clinician audience than I was at writing for a general audience (which is actually more difficult, because you have to translate the science).
Other aspects of freelancing that I soon experienced were 1) extreme dissatisfaction on the part of a client; 2) late payments or complete failure to pay; and 3) clients acting erratically. I will address each of these.

Dealing With Grumpy Clients
The first--extreme dissatisfaction on the part of a client—was and still is very difficult to take. Ideally, this will NEVER happen to you, but I don’t care how good you are, or whether you admit it to others or even yourself: if you freelance long enough, you are going to experience this. Most freelancers, it seems, don’t even reveal who their clients are, let alone freely discuss their negative experiences, so you may feel all alone when a client is unhappy. Trust me. You are not. 

The trouble with being inexperienced is that it is more difficult to ascertain whether your client is simply a problem client (sometimes they just are) or whether you are working with a normally reasonable client and that it is YOU that has the problem. The acid test regarding your competence level is this: if you don’t usually hear back from a client asking you to take on more work for them, at least 60 to 80% of the time, then that means you may have a problem, either with your skill level or with the likeability factor. Maybe you are a curmudgeon and you don’t realize it. If, however, you normally receive repeat business and get either no feedback (which you must learn to accept) or good to glowing feedback, then you are on the right track. 

What if you know you are good, but your client is unhappy? Obviously, the first thing you should do is to try to fix the problem. It is important to do what you can, but don’t go sinking too much uncompensated time into rework; more often than not, an unhappy client will not use you again, even if you fix the problem. That is a sad truth of freelancing. A staff writer can produce a bad piece of writing, and it can be attributed to their having a bad day. A freelancer, especially in the case of a first-time client, only has one opportunity to prove themselves, and they won’t usually get a second one.  A long-term client who knows you and your work will be much more forgiving, though. I have editors who I have worked with for years and who I would call good friends. They would happily ask me to fix any problems, which I would gladly do, and then they turn around and pile on more work. If you don’t have that in the beginning, you are constantly having to prove yourself, and that can be stressful.

S-L-O-W Payers

The second point is experiencing your first late payment or no payment. In my first 6 months of working full time, I got stiffed on a $900 payment by a dot com that went bust. This client stiffed a lot of other writers and there was a big uproar about it at the time. Since then, I have received the agreed upon payment for every invoice I have ever sent….eventually. Eventually being the key word. My terms are 30 days, and I stay on top of any payments that I have not received within 30 days. Polite persistence is the name of the game. You must be polite, friendly, forgiving, and patient (unless you decide you don’t want their business any more). Sometimes it takes time, energy and multiple emails and calls to receive the money that is due, and I tend to factor this in when considering whether or not to take on more work from a client. I have never had to sue a client or go to small claims court, but I would if I had to. Bottom line is, if you get a funny feeling about a client—either about their ability to pay or some other quality they are projecting (you get more adept at this as time goes on), then politely say you are booked up and can’t take on their project. There are always other clients. Always keep in mind that you have a right to be paid for any work you do.

Erratic Behavior
The third point is the erratic behavior of clients that you will notice when you start having more than 5 clients. At any one time, at least one of them will be acting up, or will fail to give you the work they said they would give you. Perhaps you cleared off your schedule, refused other work, only to be told that the big project you had planned for had been dropped entirely. The ONLY antidote to this is to book more work than you feel you can handle. Assume that only about 80% of it will take place as planned and once in a while you may have to work all weekend or pull an all nighter. Just learn to go with the flow—this is a good rule of thumb for any aspect of freelancing come to think of it!