Guess what Richard Robinson puts at the top of his list. And the bottom, too.
All about freelancing archive
"I can't remember or even imagine having to use a typewriter to do my job . . . " Emma Patten-Hitt writes about the importance in her working life of her e-mail pager, a fast laptop, voice recognition software — but not a Palm.
A discussion on the NASW Freelance Listserv dealt with tips for writing about medical conferences. For example: Are chinos okay at a radiologist's meeting? What do cardiologists eat for lunch? Do you need a laptop, or maybe a pen that'll write in the dark during PowerPoint displays? And the big one: To tape or not to tape?
This document is the record of a discussion that took place on the nasw-freelance mailing list from January 19th through January 27th, 1998. It deals with a number of issues critical to anyone trying or hoping to make a living as a free-lance science writer.
Nonfiction writers used to be generalists, even science writers. Not now, not for a long time. To get an assignment today, you specialize. Editors are looking for a particular approach to a subject, a certain tone or, occasionally, deep knowledge. For science writers in particular, showing that you have written on a topic before can confer on you instant expertise and create confidence that you understand its complexities.
Condensed from NASW's own Science Writers (1996), by Janice Hopkins Tanne