By Claire Bacon, 2 June 2025
It’s no secret that many language professionals are facing challenging times. Whether it’s the rise of AI, withdrawal of National Institutes of Health funding, or university budget cuts, many of us are reporting that we have far less work to do than we did in recent years. One way to adapt is to learn from each other by sharing our experiences.
Towards the end of 2024, I lost two major clients. With no notice, the medical journal I worked for decided as ‘part of a broader strategy to streamline workflow and enhance external capabilities’ to no longer contract external copy editors and, thanks to the massive university budget cuts in the Netherlands, I suddenly lost teaching work from a Dutch university. This left some big gaps in my work schedule – not something I have been used to in the last few years. Instead of panicking, I decided to keep calm and carry on. I asked myself two questions: how can I adapt to this changing situation and how can I use this extra time to my advantage?
Adapting to the changing situation
My immediate challenge was to find new clients to fill the gap. Luckily, I had strategies for this that have worked well for me in the past. I built up my original client base through content marketing – writing blog articles about research writing and sharing advice on social media. I had neglected my blog for a few years because I simply didn’t have the time for it – there was always plenty of work to do and of course the family needed attention. Now was the time to reignite it. I dusted off my list of ideas for blog posts and got back to work. I realized just how much I enjoyed creating content to help researchers with their writing, and was almost thankful to my current difficulties for forcing me back into blogging!
I also developed an effective strategy for content marketing on social media. Although I have done this in the past, I did find it difficult to maintain a consistent online presence in the face of work and family commitments. To improve my chances of success this time, I decided to stick to one social media platform (I picked LinkedIn as this is where I have the most useful interactions with like-minded professionals and potential clients) and to make a content marketing schedule. A very helpful discovery here was the scheduling function on LinkedIn, which allows you to prepare posts in advance and schedule when they will be published. This allowed me to spend one or two quiet working days preparing my LinkedIn posts for the next month, rather than stressing out finding the time each day to post. I also allotted 15 minutes each day to going through my LinkedIn feed and interacting with others. These marketing efforts have already brought in new work.
Diversifying: Using ‘unwanted’ extra time to our advantage
Although no freelance language professional wants gaps in their schedule, I knew there must be ways to make the most of this extra time. I briefly considered a complete career change and getting new qualifications, but realized that I do still have a decent client base and that I love editing and teaching scientific writing too much to throw in the towel just yet. Then, a lab in New York got in touch out of the blue asking for scientific writing workshops, which gave me the motivation I needed to pursue this avenue of work independently. I started working on developing my own scientific writing courses and have now added this as an additional service on my website.
We all know that AI is affecting our work as language professionals and that we need to embrace AI to move forward. So, to learn more about AI, I signed up for the Academic Language Expert’s free AI bootcamp and invested in Emma Nichols’ AI in Medical Writing and Editing course . Both were very informative and I now know a lot more about AI and how to use it. However, I confess that I am still struggling to actually use AI myself in my editing and writing. I have spent many years developing my writing and editing skills and have approaches to writing and editing that work well for me. I am also concerned about the effect of AI on critical thinking skills in young researchers if they start to rely on it for their writing rather than using it to facilitate the writing process. I’m looking forward to getting more insights and advice on this at the SENSE Jubilee Conference in June!
What else to do with this extra time? I realized I could improve my German. I live in Germany and my German is already good; I get by in most situations, I have close friends with whom I speak only German, and I can happily read novels in German. But I have been stuck at a B2-plus level for a while now and realized that I cannot get to C1 level by myself. Now I had time to do something about it, and enrolled for a twice-weekly intensive online course. This course highlighted some specific language-learning goals for me this year: to improve my grammar and expand my vocabulary. I have vowed to read more in German this year to help achieve this (so far I have three novels under my belt). I would not have set these goals if I hadn’t lost my clients.
Staying positive
These are challenging times, but we language professionals still have a valuable service to offer our clients. I would love to hear about how you are responding to these challenges, so do drop me a line! I am also looking forward to chatting with you all at the conference in June.
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Blog post by: Claire Bacon |
