To develop and manage medical care contracts with organizations, government programs, and health care providers for over 250,000 plan members.
Perform substantive editing, copyediting, and proofreading of marketing buy ambien in canada collateral for the Marketing & Communications Department, including:
eng.jhu.edu/wse/page/alumni-friends-new
To support the constituencies of the Whiting School of Engineering and secure financial resources required to fulfill the school’s mission through communications, fund development, and donor stewardship.
WTEC is the national leader in conducting international technology assessments.
Provided a wide range of editorial support services for WTEC’s international technology assessment conferences and proceedings:
Provided staff support services for monthly meetings of the Multi-Agency Tissue Engineering Science Interagency Working Group (under WTEC contractor support agreement):
On-site reporting duties:
Editor and designer, Pen in Hand. Sample clips:
Editor, Keyboard in Hand, the MWA newsblog
Acting webmaster; features/news editor and writer, Canton Connection Online community newsblog (now defunct) ; Editor, The Canton Connection. Sample clips:
www.cantoncommunity.org/content/friends-canton-library
As Secretary, drafted meeting minutes, updated and maintained Friends webpage, created marketing materials, and wrote ad copy for fundraising events.
Editor, TPSS Cooperative Effort News. Ghostwrote the regular “Comment Corner” and “Featured Employees” columns, plus “Upcoming Events” and other sidebars. Sample clips:
Paul Lagasse has also been published in Artella: The Waltz of Words and Art, As the Eraser Burns . . . , Aviation History, Bay Weekly, Boys’ Quest, Encyclopedia of American Business History (2005 ed.), HAIlights, HAIpoints, Library Matters (University of Maryland), and Pen in Hand. He has had reviews published on H-Net and The Potomac.
To provide an independent forum for the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power, the advancement of the naval profession, and the preservation of US naval history.
Provide on-site reporting and same-day summary preparation for USNI conferences, including:
Prepare summaries of keynote presentations, individual and panel sessions, including quotes from speakers. Edit summaries and provide same-day turnaround of edited manuscripts for posting on the conference website.
A federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) operated by the Institute for Defense Analyses, STPI provides high-quality research and analysis to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), including copyediting, substantive editing, technical writing, and research and analysis.
Provided writing and editorial services to STPI to help it fulfill its research mandate to its clients.
Co-author:
Editorial support for reports and publications, including:
Various on-site reporting and minutes preparation duties, including:
I recently had the pleasure of being the subject of a weekly interview for Write Out Loud, a blog for and about writers by Baltimore-based freelance writer Ami Spencer. Ami asked me to discuss how an academically-trained archivist ended up with a freelancing career, the benefits of participating in local xanax brand xanax generic writing organizations like the Baltimore chapter of the MWA, how I find clients, and my biggest vice (writing-wise, that is).
The interview went live today. You can find it here. Thanks again, Ami! It was fun.
I’m always looking for useful analogies to convey how good editing can improve advertising copy, web features, white papers, and other written communications. This morning I was reading an article about medicine and it hit me that what editors do when revising a piece of written work is analogous to what doctors do when diagnosing a patient’s symptoms.
Like a living organism, written copy is a complex system of interactive elements that can be rendered “unhealthy” by the presence of errors in spelling, grammar, or logic. A good editor, like a good doctor, knows how to read the symptoms — for example, “this doesn’t sound right, but I don’t know why” — and can suggest corrections that will restore the piece to optimum health.
Let’s take a look at how you can apply the four cornerstones of diagnostic medicine to make your writing all better.
Recently, in preparation for an interview for a magazine article, I visited the website of the interviewee’s organization to get some background information. In particular, I wanted to make sure I understood the organization’s mission; it’s a useful reference point for framing interview questions.
Unfortunately, the mission statement that I found on the “About Us” page didn’t tell me a thing about their mission. It was one of those focus-grouped slogans full of vague buzzwords that promised to deliver intangible things in response to undefined needs. The site design was very clean and professional, but what, exactly, did they do?
I found myself mentally cringing at the thought of getting more of the same during the interview. I was in need of choice quotes and piercing insights, not abstractions wrapped in vapor.
However, to my relief and even pleasure, the interview turned out to be one of the best I’ve had in a long time. The interviewee used sharp, lucid, and concise language to convey information and offer insights. Not only did I get my choice quotes, by the end of the interview I knew what the article would look like — hook, lede, and sinker. Writers live for interviews like that.
Afterward, once I had finished cleaning up my notes, I found myself pondering the power of clarity. Had their website been my only point of contact with the organization, I would buy ventolin hfa online have walked away with a very different opinion about their capabilities. What makes for a good slogan?
I read an interesting post on Write to Done this morning offering tips on how to break through writer’s block. The first tip: remind yourself that you’re a writer.
While I generally find the advice on WTD to be both useful and on target, I have to disagree with that particular tip (the rest were pretty handy). Regular readers know that I don’t call myself a wordsmith; but it might surprise you to know that I prefer not to call myself a writer either.
No, I don’t eschew the term in favor of buzzwords like “communicator” or “content provider,” either. When people ask me what I do for a living, I don’t tell them that I’m a writer.
I tell them that I write.
A pedantic distinction? Maybe — but it’s a distinction that can clear up the crippling paralysis of writer’s block once and for all.
