To start a career as a freelance medical writer you will require a fair experience in standard technical writing under your belt. Since medical writing is a highly technical job, if you do not have any experience as a medical writer you must consider enrolling yourself for a basic certificate or diploma program in medical writing that will familiarize you with the key concepts of medical writing and with the documents that medical writers are expected to write. This will also give your potential clients some confidence in handing over the project to you. In addition, keep some of your writing samples always ready to share with potential clients.
Before you decide to embark on your journey as a freelance medical writer, analyze if you really have the qualification and skills to become a medical writer.
There are a number of strategies that you can use to find yourself some medical writing home jobs. You can get started by listing yourself as a freelance writer on various websites such as getafreelancer(dot)com or elance(dot)com or even our own website. Some websites let you bid for work posted by clients in which you can participate and even seal the assignment. Although such endeavors will provide you with some experience to showcase to future clients in addition to a handful of cash, there are other more important things that you must do. Try contacting mid-size to large companies, agencies and consultants on your own and market your services. Also, keep an eye on medical / technical writing advertisements in local newspapers, magazines and job websites. These activities will enable you build strong working relationships and a group of clients that will fetch you sustained work and better pay checks.
As you grow in the field of medical writing, along the way ensure that you hold memberships of organizations such as the American/European/Australian Medical Writers Association (A/E/AuMWA). You must as well actively participate in medical writing events such as conferences and seminars. These will enable you to network with key people in the medical writing domain and with people whose companies routinely outsource medical writing work.
If you can manage to work with some pharmaceutical companies for writing high quality documents for successful regulatory submissions such as for the US FDA, EMEA, MHRA etc your pay checks are going to be huge. Successful submission of dossiers to regulatory agencies for obtaining marketing approvals of new drugs and devices matter a lot to these companies.
As a part of your development in this field, try to diversify! Write about various science related topics. You may even write about non scientific topics which will give your potential clients a sense of your capability to adapt and write about any subject. Market yourself well. Getting your name published in reputed journals or magazines will be a great way to boost your public profile as a writer.
So, to conclude, being a freelance medical writer (medical writer home job) is a good career option for any budding medical writer. Even though it is a work from home job it is still exciting and offers a good scope of personal growth. With experience, your value as a writer in this domain will always be on a rise and so will be your pay check 🙂