Blessed profession – No Foolin’

Perfect spring weather in KC yesterday and today prompted extended bike rides of over 20 miles each day with a multitude of birds playing morning tunes, highlighted by a manic-obsessive Cardinal constantly singing until it stopped to listen to my whistle mimic; afternoon sun smiled down warmly, exertion-heated muscles strained, tendons taunt, the breezes cooled my moist brow and back, all fed the fully-in-the-moment theme that prevailed.

Although there are times under deadline when there is no flex in my schedule and I am essentially working full out, the last two days have been filled with gratitude for this blessed profession. Two of my estimates were accepted recently. Both projects are for the production of clinical trial reports for refereed-journal publication. Both projects are with established companies and both of my contacts with these companies are holding carrots out in the form of, “There are many more of these reports to write, if things work out well on this one.”

The cynic in me has begun to wonder if that is just a standard line for these folks, but the hope the line generates certainly fits with my current goal of working more closely with clients and developing a relationship of trust where they feel comfortable coming to me for repeat business, knowing I will do a great job, and not having to fool around so much with the estimate process. One of the things I miss after a few years of freelance independence is the team feeling, the camaraderie of the group. Focusing on projects with the potential for repeat business and long-term relationship development is my plan. We’ll see how that goes.

The day is nearly over at this point. Time to go check out the final four, which I taped for playback to skip the commercials. Barring unforeseen pranks I might just make it through this day without any April Fool’s Day foolishness. All-in-all, this is one grateful medical writer.

WebRings for medical writers - Need One

I've searched around and can't find any medical writing WebRings. I posted a query on the American Medical Writers Association (AMWA) http://www.amwa.org/ Freelance listserv and found several people who were interested, but no active medical writing WebRing to join. An AMWA friend of mine found a biotechnology WebRing and I joined it at the first of this month. I put the code on my web page http://homepage.mac.com/tcoles/home.html, but the ringmaster has not generated any activity on the ring since 12/17/05 and my site is still classified as pending. Oh well…

So, I guess it might be time to get off my gluteus maximus and start one. Why do I want my site to be linked to other medical writers? One reason is to improve my Google search standings, another is to keep tabs on the sites others have out there and watch fellow writers develop. With Google AdSense it might even make a bit of money – not really my main reason for doing this stuff, but could be a nice side benefit!

Still, I think it best to be a member of a WebRing for a while before jumping in with both feet and trying to manage one. I’ve found another ring, “Science For All,” and submitted my site just this morning. Think I’ll wait and see how that goes for a while. When I look at some of the blogs and some of the sites out there it can be a bit daunting. They probably got to be such behemoths little by little. So here I go, one foot in front of the other, one baby step at a time. Steady…steady…

Thoughts on nondisclosure agreements - Go Mutual

In my experience nondisclosure agreements (NDA) are pretty one-sided and often require the consultant to return all confidential information including all copies, summaries, and notes pertaining to said "Confidential Information." This may not sound like a big deal until you think of the position this puts you in if some nasty disagreement comes up and lawyers start mucking things up encouraging people to answer questions with silly responses such as, "I can neither confirm, nor deny..."

At that point it might be a good idea to at least have one copy of the work you wrote about said "Confidential Information" to protect yourself from out and out lies. I have found that mutual NDAs are much more balanced because the client will have to abide by the same rules as the consultant. All of the mutual NDAs I have seen allow both parties to keep one copy of the "Confidential Information" and all notes pertaining to such information. Now I routinely ask a mutual NDA. Recently I was asked what information I would be sharing that would be confidential and I bit my tongue and answered that I wouldn’t know until we were in the middle of the job and that it would be best to have everything in place so I could share freely with the client at that point. What I wanted to say was, “Barring a signed agreement, if I tell you the information that is confidential, then I’ll have to kill you.”