Writing her own ticket to success from home office
Monday, October 03, 2005
By ALYSSA YOUNG
The Express-Times
A potential downside of being self-employed is not finding enough work.
Debra Gordon has the opposite problem. She has a tendency to take on too much.
Five years ago, when she started working as a freelance writer and
editor specializing in medical and health issues, she discovered
countless possibilities.
"I really didn't expect it would work out this well," Gordon said
recently in her spacious home office on Hemlock Lane in Lower Nazareth
Township. "I think I always want to have my own business."
Among the reference materials in the built-in bookcase to the left
of her U-shaped desk are volumes she has written and edited.
On the white board above her is a list of pending projects to keep her busy for at least two more months.
She's turning down work until she finishes a book about the best
remedies people can use to treat more than 100 health conditions.
Gordon and Dr. Mary Hardy, an integrative medicine physician at
Cedar Sinai/University of California, Los Angeles, started the book in
early April and expect to complete it by the end of the month.
Hardy says Gordon is "unusually good" at making complicated medical
information understandable for a general audience without "dumbing it
down" or leaving things out.
"Deb's just been great to work with," Hardy said. "I'd work with her (again) in a second."
Writing about health and medicine "just sort of happened," said Gordon, 42.
At her first newspaper job, she was a busy reporter covering a small town.
A week after giving birth to her oldest son, the University of
Virginia graduate started working part time as a freelancer for her
hometown newspaper, The Virginian Pilot. The paper had just started a
health section and later launched a special weekend section about
women's health.
She was assigned to a team focusing on women, family and children's
issues and for five years enjoyed writing several in-depth narrative
features.
Gordon spent six months with a family whose father, in his 40s,
suffered from early-onset Alzheimer's disease. She watched doctors
remove cancer from a woman's lungs and wrote about a newborn who
weighed less than 1 pound.
Gordon's resume also includes stints as a public information
specialist for two cities, marketing director for the Diabetes Research
Foundation, provider services manager for a health care company and
health reporter for the Orange County Register in Santa Ana, Calif.
These experiences provided background knowledge that helps her
cover a span of clinical and policy issues for professional and
consumer audiences.
"As a journalist you're trained to be able to learn about and write
about everything," Gordon said. "If you can write about sewage
treatment plants, you can write about women's health."
Gordon, her husband and their three sons moved six years ago to the
Lehigh Valley after she found a job writing and editing books at Rodale
Press Inc. in Emmaus, and Keith Gordon joined the global marketing
department at Organon, a pharmaceuticals company.
After about 18 months, Gordon left Rodale with a few contracts to
continue freelance work, and her independent writing and editing
business took off.
"Now all of a sudden you have the entire world you can freelance
for," she said. "Once you start and realize the possibilities, they're
endless."
Her work has been published in popular magazines such as Family Circle, Good Housekeeping, Parents and Reader's Digest.
She has regular assignments for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation,
an organization committed to improving health and health care, and the
National Women's Health Resource Center, an online resource for health
information at healthywomen.org.
Gordon knocks on wood when she says she has reached the pinnacle of her career.
She feels "unemployable." She likes working on her own schedule in
her home—with her officemate Tyler, a Cavalier King Charles spaniel—pursuing a variety of projects for a number of clients.
One thing she wants to improve: striking a better balance in her life.
"Your income is only limited by your energy," Gordon said. "But it
takes awhile to realize you need to marshal some of that energy for
other things."
Gordon is pursuing a master's degree in biomedical writing from the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia.
She hopes to do more teaching and coaching, and she and her husband
are considering starting their own consulting firm for pharmaceutical
companies, offering expertise in global marketing and communications.
Reporter Alyssa Young can be reached at 610-863-3841 or by e-mail at ayoung@express-times.com.
© 2006 The Express Times
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