In 2007, I worked as a freelance editor for Publications International, Ltd. (PIL - The rocker in me loves this acronymn). PIL is a unique publisher in that they sign agreements with their freelancers so that PIL maintains ownership of content, which was atypical in publication for a long time.

Because PIL owned all the nonfiction content created for them over the years, they were able to broker a deal with HowStuffWorks.com, providing the website with billions of pages of relevant content for their "how to" search engine. (Including the picture that I chose to illustrate this blog post, btw).

As a freelance editor, It was my job to fit existing content into the HowStuffWorks.com format. I formatted articles relating to Arts and Crafts, Gardening and Travel.

Back in 1999 when the economy was strong, when everyone had a well-paid freelance gig at a dotcom, I was writing websites at a company called Dream Theater, located in Chatsworth, CA. That's in "The Valley," for those not familiar with the Los Angeles Metro area.

Dream Theater was a sweatshop for creatives, but a pleasant and accommodating one. One of those workplaces where your supervisor would say: "You want to leave for lunch? Sit down, let us buy you lunch. Whatever you want. Just keep typing."

Luckily the work was stimulating and fun. My favorite project while working there was the website we did for The Sixth Sense. In addition to the website, we created an interactive screenplay that presented the Acadeny-award winning screenplay in its entirety with breakout videos to explain actor's motivations, visual symbolism and clues meant to build up to the surprise twist. After we completed the project, I counted the pages of text, interviews and supplemental materials in the website and calculated that if it were a book, it would have been approximately 700 pages.

When I worked as a copywriter in the Marketing Services department for The New York Times, the majority of my work was creating sell sheets - leave-behind materials for the in-house Advertising Sales representatives.

The format of these pieces was fairly rigid, but between the creativity of the graphic designers and a clever headline or two, we managed to turn out some nice pieces.

In 2007 I began freelancing for the trade magazine CMA Today through a freelance service called CopyDesk, Inc.

CMA stands for "Certified Medical Assistant," which is a relatively new position in the medical field. Back in 1993, while working for a temp agency in Chicago, I got sent to a doctor's office as a receptionist and ended up doing medical assistant work - weighing people, taking their temperature, pulling and filing medical records. I remember once, after taking a patient's temperature, she asked, "Are you a nurse?" and I said, "No, I'm a temp." Thankfully, medical assistants are well-trained now.

But I digress. I really enjoyed writing for CMA Today, as the articles gave me an excuse to educate myself on aspects of medical practice that I only skimmed over in acupuncture school. In addition to the article on Swimmer's Ear, I wrote about echocardiograms, electronic medical records and digital distance learning in medical education.

Many years after my work at Literature and Medicine, I came back to The Chicago Manual of Style as a proofreader on John and Tina Chen's book, Chinese Herbal Formulas and Applications. This was one of those right time, right place dream jobs.

For those of you outside the Chinese Medicine community, John Chen is a unique figure in alternative medicine. He's both a PharmD. and a Licensed Acupuncturist. He approached herbal medicine as a scientist - translating clinical trials from China and meticulously documenting herb-drug interactions. This book is a detailed text of traditional Chinese herbal formulas with scientific data never-before seen by Western eyes.

Dr. Chen was one of my teachers in acupuncture school, and I was thrilled when he asked me to be a proofreader. It was like being paid to study and get first crack at information all of my fellow students wanted.

To this day, I recommend this book to medical professionals of all stripes who want to learn more about herbal medicine.

Today it seems that diversity is accepted and expected in the workplace. Back in 2000 when we created this brochure for an advertorial, it was an evolving concept in Human Resources. This brochure was a carefully-constructed attempt to re-brand diversity in the workplace, know up until this point as "Affirmative Action," a term that had the effect of polarizing people politically. As a copywriter, it was interesting work on such sensitive subject matter and receive feedback from many minds on how to define and establish "diversity" as a concept in the most politically appropriate way.

Being at The New York Times, these discussions were profoundly respectful and interesting. The sell sheet appears simple, but it involved many hours of work.

Ah, the pleasure of a clever headline. It's really the biggest thrill of an advertising copywriter, isn't it?

This headline is one of my best, I think. Not the headline of the sell sheet itself or the subhead; but the first section headline.

If the cleverness isn't immediately apparent, try singing the headline to the most obvious tune.

Writing for The New York Times was, of course, awesome; but their formatting and style requirements were quite rigid. As a copywriter in the Marketing Services department, my creativity was confined to clever headlines and turns of phrase.

My first experience working as a journalist was an internship at the Macon Telegraph in Macon, Georgia. My alma mater, The Medill School of Journalism, required a three-month stint at a daily newspaper for graduation.

The sting of the editor's red pen was bitter at the age of 19. My first assisgnment was to cover the County Fair, which was a blast. I interviewed carneys, alligator handlers, sideshow performers and locals attending the festivities.

When I came back to the office, however, the fun stopped. Greg, one of the Metro editors back in 1990, sat me down and went over my article sentence by sentence, showing my how to improve my writing. His criticism bruised my fragile ego, but he walked me through the critique with the patience of a saint. By the end of my tenure in Macon, I realized that feedback was just part of the profession and took criticism like a professional.

When I lived in New Orleans in 1996, I focused on writing fiction and magazine articles for Tribe magazine, a slick Raygun-style start-up covering the most urbane aspects of New Orleans culture.

This piece on absinthe was the first, and, because of my short tenure in the City that Care Forgot, only piece for the magazine. The second story that I pitched was a piece about snuff films, but after watching a couple Japanese toruture videos and reading Peter Sotos' rants in Answer Me!, I decided that the less I had to do with that culture the better.

This article was loads for fun to write. It starts out as an homage to Kurt Vonnegut, and devolves into a Hunter S. Style description of a true, if embellished, account of how I brewed absinthe from scratch with the aid of two male assistants.

The editors of Tribe also gave me the opportunity to read fiction at the Insomniacathon in 1996, a fiction event celebrating William Burroughs and the beat poets with 48 hours of non-stop fiction readings.

Somehow Tribe editors unearthed Kim Fowley to emcee the event, who made a huge and lasting impression on me. The man was crazy tall and lanky, wearing a bright red carney suit with shocking white hair. He picked up on my stage fright and challenged me so that I volunteered to read first. After he walked away, I thought, "What the hell did I just do?"

One of my first jobs after graduating from Northwestern Univeristy was working at the University of Illinois Medical School's Department of Medical Humanities as the department secreatary and editorial assistant for the academic journal Literature and Medicine.

Even though the editorial assistant work was challenging, it was my favorite part of the position. This was my first experience working with The Chicago Manual of Style, and the subject matter of the articles was so wildly compelling -- acromegaly, spontaneous combustion, and more. The journal was published semi-annually.

One of the journal's editors, Suzanne Poirier, a literature professor who taught medical students to read and appreciate literature, is still a mentor and friend. In fact, I'm certain that understanding how physicians struggle with empathy and issues of boundaries helped me have compassion during my mariginal experiences with doctors over the years; and learning the value of empathetic, well-rounded practitioners motivated my decision later in life to earn a Masters in Traditional Oriental Medicine.

Although she has retired from teaching, Suzanne is still contributing actively to the field of medical education. Her book, Doctors in the Making: Memoirs and Medical Education, was published last year by the Univeristy of Iowa Press.