Showing your writing outside the job
Publishing independently gives medical writers practice, examples of their work and a chance to discover what holds readers who are free to stop reading.
Learning from readers’ responses
Publishing on a blog or social media can help a writer discover what readers respond to: readers who are not obliged to continue stop when the content does not interest them. Techniques that attract voluntary readers can then be applied to work written for readers who have to read it.
A blog or social media account also provides practice and an audience of the writer’s own, with freedom to choose the content and edit it at any time. The resulting articles can form a small portfolio of writing examples.
Choosing what to publish
Writers should consider whom they want to reach and what those readers want from the content. They should also choose subjects they find interesting, because otherwise posting can become boring and difficult to sustain.
Regular independent writing can take several forms: explaining a scientific paper twice a week, reporting pharmaceutical news or producing a newsletter. Writers who explained complex papers twice a week became known in their scientific community for that work. In another case, a weekly biotechnology and pharmaceutical news newsletter attracted a few hundred readers.
Getting started
Getting started can be difficult; setting up a blog and writing articles gives practice without dwelling too much on what others might think. Writers can learn by posting and discovering what they enjoy, rather than overthinking algorithms and their parameters. Posting something meaningful even once a week is one suggested way to begin, including when the purpose is not business.