Popular Health & Medical Writing for Magazines

Book excerpt: Here's how to transform your interest in popular health topics such as gene hunters, medical trends, self-help, nutrition, current issues, or pets into writing salable feature articles for popular publications. Become a health-aware feature writer, journalist, editor, indexer, abstractor, proofreader, information broker, book packager, investigative reporter, pharmaceutical copywriter, or documentary video producer. Here are the skills you'll need to transform your interest in popular science into writing health and medical feature and filler articles or columns for a wide variety of publications. For those who always wanted to write or edit medical publications, scripts, medical record histories, case histories, or books, here's a guide with all the strategies and techniques you'll need to become a medical writer, journalist, or editor. Whether you're a medical language specialist, transcriber, freelance writer, editor, indexer, or want to be, you'll learn how to write and market high-demand feature articles for popular magazines on a variety of popular science subjects from health, fitness, and nutrition to DNA, pet issues, and self-help. You'll find not only how-to techniques, but contacts for networking, associations, and where to find the research. You don't need science courses to write about popular science. What you do need is dedication to writing, journalism, or editing--freelance or staff. Feature articles and fillers are wanted on popular health-related subjects for general consumer, women's, men's, and niche magazines.