ORGANIZATION 101

by Emma Hitt

If you're asked "what presentation did you cover this morning?" and you struggle to come up with a response, then perhaps, like me, you have a poor short-term memory. When you give me directions, I only pretend to remember them to be polite. Often, I look something up, close the book, only to realize that I'm going to have to look it up again. It's a handicap. But like other handicapped people, I've learned to compensate, and perhaps I'm better off than I would be otherwise. My solution is to organize myself so that I hardly have to remember anything.

I didn't think much about this until I responded to a posting on nasw-freelance asking for ideas about how to organize oneself. I rattled off a few suggestions, thinking that I wouldn't be telling anyone anything they didn't already know. To my amazement, several people e-mailed me off-list to thank me. In response to this interest, here is a fleshed-out version of my original listserv comments.

At any given time, I'm juggling at least ten different clients. Each client is being queried, written for, rewritten for, billed, or nagged for payment. The only way I keep track of all that activity is with an Excel spreadsheet. The spreadsheet has seven columns with the following headings: date (i.e. the date the work was assigned), client, description (one-word description of the piece for my own reference), sent? (filled in with a "yes" once I've sent it), invoice (filled in with the invoice number when I send the invoice-if they don't need an invoice I just put ***), charge (the amount of the invoice I sent), and amount received (filled in with the dollar amount when I receive payment).

So an example would be:

I also color code the entries by client and try to associate each client with its color. This makes it easier to pick an entry out on the spreadsheet and prevents the spreadsheet from becoming a jumbled mass. The Reuters Health entries, for example, are red-bright red, signifying the urgency of end-of-the-day deadlines that I'm usually racing to meet. The Urology Times is yellow.

If I have to nag a client for payment, I put 1st notice, 2nd notice, etc., and the date in the amount received column until I receive payment. Nagging begins 30 days after the invoice date and happens approximately every 30 days thereafter. I use the same color system for my filing system as I do for the spreadsheet. For example, Reuters Health has a red folder. This makes it easy to pick out the right folder out of the stack when I start work on a project.

If a project will take more than about 10 hours, I staple a billing sheet on the left side of the client's folder. On the billing sheet, I put rows with 10 squares each in them. If I estimate that a project will take 40 hours, I insert four rows of squares. Each time I complete an hour of work on the project I put an "X" in the square. If I complete half an hour I put a diagonal slash (half an "X").

I also keep daily totals of everything I do. For example, on one day, I might complete a short piece for a client that pays $250, and I'll do three hours of work on a longer project for which I've estimated the hourly rate to be $100 per hour. So the total I enter for the day is $550. Since this figure is on a spreadsheet, it can be easily transformed into weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly averages (contact me if you want more info on how to generate these). That way, I always know where I stand financially. This allows me to take time off without feeling that I should be working.

Each client also has a separate file for contracts and check stubs. Every time I receive a payment, I do three things: I file the check stub in the client's "contract and check stubs" file; I enter the amount of the payment in the "amount received" column of the spreadsheet; and I also enter the amount on a separate page of the spreadsheet that has a list of all the payments I receive (doing this generates my actual monthly income). This series of checks and balances is important, because if I forget one of the steps, I have always remembered to do at least one of the other two. Because of this, I am certain of who has paid me and who has not.

Here are some other suggestions:

• I have an ongoing to-do list which is always in front of me at my computer. If I think of something that I have to do, I make a note of it, but I don't interrupt my writing to do the task. I separate tasks into high, medium, and low priority and try to work my way through the high priority list before I let myself do some of the medium and low priority tasks that I'd prefer to be doing.
• I store backup materials for completed projects in a pile in a big storage box, so that they are loosely organized by date, and I can search for things if necessary.
• Conferences: I have a ten-pocket file for conference materials. I assign each conference its own folder and label the folder with the conference name, date, and the client(s). I file the folders in order of date. Every time I register, book a flight or hotel room, etc., I make a note of it on the left hand side of the folder. Any materials I receive before the conference goes in the appropriate folder.
• I have only one calendar in which I write all due dates, conferences, and appointments, both work and social, so that I don't double schedule.
• Business receipts get stored in a separate pocket folder file labeled with "postage, travel, office supplies, etc."
• Each microcassette tape gets its own envelope on which I list the name of the client, the date, the interviewee, and the approximate length of the interview. I cross out the entry when I've transcribed the interview. I usually have two or three envelopes going at any one time. When I've used up a tape, I seal it in the envelope and store it. The entries serve as a log of what's on the tape in case I need to go back to it.

Only the fittest of these ideas have survived the test of my laziness. I blame my short-term memory for not remembering who or where these ideas came from. Most of them sprang up of their own accord, but I can't claim them all as my own. Anyway, I hope they are useful. Please contact me at emma@emmasciencewriter.com if you have any questions or ideas you'd like to share.

Marketing 101

There's not much point in being organized if you don't have any clients, so here are suggestions that might keep that client roster full. First, I would like to dispel the notion that a career in freelance science writing necessarily leads to a life of abject poverty. It doesn't have to. I know from experience and from talking with other freelance writers that many of us earn an excellent income, although it does have to be earned. A strong marketing effort is also necessary, especially in the first few years of freelancing. You are, after all, building a business. But as time goes on, you can relax the effort. Clients start finding you, and you can tell the less appealing ones that you're all booked up-which is fun. These days, amidst a furious 40-50 hours of work a week, I find these strategies useful whenever I want to stir up the client mix.

Create (and then maintain) a professional-looking Web site to which you can refer prospective clients. I cannot stress enough the importance of having your Web site linked to the NASW homepage. More than one client has found me this way. [You can read my two-cents worth about how to build a Web site at www.emmasciencewriter.com/freelance%20website.htm.]

• Do your best not to turn down work, so that your regular clients don't get in the habit of calling someone else (but don't take on so much that you compromise quality).
• Send out 25 or more e-mails each week referring people to your professional-looking Web site, which has your resume and samples.
  n Send freelance applications to full-time positions (make sure you tell them you know it's full-time but . . .).
• Network. Talk to people in the press room at conferences, go to local NASW meetings, help other science writers who are just starting out, offer to talk to schools/colleges about a career in science writing, write articles for ScienceWriters and the NASW Web site, recommend other science writers to your clients.
• Visit your clients at least once, if possible, so they know you by more than just your name. A brief "just-in-the-area" pop-by works well. This seems to encourage an editor to select you for assignments over someone they haven't met.
• Sign up for conferences and pitch to several clients/prospective clients that would be interested in that particular conference.
• Remind clients that you would like them to recommend you to other clients. The best time to do this is after a client has paid you a compliment.
• Hire an assistant who can transcribe tapes and answer the phone for less than your hourly rate.
• Employ technology to increase your speed and efficiency.
• Consider yourself a specialist, but be a generalist. Example: I have the most experience in writing about cancer, which helps me get jobs in that field. But I write about any topic in medicine or the micro life sciences, which means that I can still get jobs in a broad range of topics not related to cancer.
• Diversify your client list and seek clients in academia, big pharma, medical education, news, journals, magazines, etc.
• Always be reachable during working hours by phone and e-mail. I have wireless e-mail and can be reached anytime, such as when I'm sitting in a meeting or stuck in traffic.
• Focus not so much on the per word rate, but the hourly rate. Taking only $1 per word jobs doesn't make sense, although there's no harm is seeking these jobs. All you need to do to make $100K a year is to work five 8-hour days a week at $50 per hour, or some combination thereof. I won't do a job for less than $50 an hour, but I have a couple of clients that pay as little as $0.25 a word, yet they meet my minimum hourly rate.
• Send query letters to print magazines only if there's some reason that your idea is likely to be accepted (like they know you) or if you desperately want to write for them. The querying process takes too much uncompensated time, and it's a gamble. This process is what people think freelancers do all day long and is why they think freelancers can't make a living. And based on this assumption, they'd be right.
• Always answer the question "how's business?" with the response "great" or "excellent, thank you." I read this suggestion somewhere when I first started taking freelance work (sorry, I don't remember where). I thought it was hokey at the time, but since then, using this response has never made a liar out of me.

Perhaps it's some flighty karmic phenomenon about success attracting success.
Many of these marketing ideas are based on providing superior "customer service." Constantly acquiring new clients is a grueling way to keep a business going; the more effective strategy is to make yourself so valuable to a client once you've found them that they won't want to stop giving you work. Any competent writer can achieve this. Unfair as it may seem, talent does not guarantee freelancing success. But even competent writers-not necessarily talented ones-are highly likely to be successful if they approach their writing as a business.

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Emma Hitt is a freelance writer living in Roswell, Ga.

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