Science Writers forum: topic
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So. . . what do y'all do?
Lesly Anne Lopez-Skinner
Tuesday, 04 September 2007 12:47 UTC
Since there are over 100 people in this forum group and I’m kind of new to the field, I’m just kind of curious. . . how did you come about science writing and what do you do now?
I guess I’ll start — I had some journalism experience in college, but ended up pursuing a graduate degree in genetics and developmental biology. I’d always dabbled with writing, publishing a freelance article here and there. Since it’s practially unheard of at my university for grad students to pursue non-academic or non-industry roles, I didn’t really have many people to ask or mentors to work with. . . but I’m still open to opportunities hint hint :-)
I still freelance, but currently I’m trying to develop a side business focusing on career development for the young scientist. It’s been rather interesting trying to balance it with my day job, since benchtop science is rarely just a “day” job. I rely heavily on internet communities and resources for guidance, and I tend to pounce upon anyone I meet who’s successfully created a cross-over career (hence, the creation of this forum post).
So. . . what do y’all do?
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Replies
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Great question, Lesly Anne. I was always interested in both science and writing, but in the UK the education system doesn’t really let you combine (say) physics and english as subjects, so I ended up with a science degree, then went into the airline industry.
I always wrote stuff, and eventually found an outlet in computing magazines (I was working in IT at the time). When I left the airline, it was to do consultancy in business creativity (which I’d got involved with in the company), and it seemed a good opportunity to try a book on creativity to help support the consultancy. My first books were all creativity or business books – it was only when I was reasonably well established on the creativity side that I managed to get back to my first love and start writing science books.
I now spend more than half of my time on the writing side, almost entirely on books, but with a little magazine work. The trouble with this is it’s very difficult to get enough of an advance on popular science (which is what I write). Many publishers assume you have a day job and only write for fun, and pay accordingly. I’m lucky in that I’ve got a commercially minded agent, who manages to get reasonable advances, though I still get publishers who feel that (say) $10,000 (or even $0 in the case of our hosts, Macmillan) is enough.
I love having the cross-over, though it means I have to be prepared to do practically anything to raise cash. For instance I sell books via Amazon Marketplace, use my websites (www.cul.co.uk for creativity and www.popularscience.co.uk for popular science book reviews) to raise cash via advertising and generally turn my hand to anything.
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Hi Lesly,
I went straight from uni into an abortive attempt at biochemical research at Cancer Research UK. It became rapidly obvious that this was a poor move and I struggled to work out what I wanted to do instead. A communications course for students really inspired me and I started looking for jobs in that area, which proved to be very difficult with next to no experience.
CR-UK’s information office kindly gave me some work experience and, soon after, a full-time position. I’m still here now and I write for (and manage) one of our websites and do a lot of media work, providing quotes and responses for journalists (perhaps even some on this network?).
On the side, I wanted to get some extra writing practice so I started up a blog called Not Exactly Rocket Science. It’s slowly acquired a decent readership and I hope that it now represents a good and ready-made portfolio of my work.
I’ve also tried to enter science writing competitions where I can (many are closed to people not actually doing research or not actually journalists). I won runner-up prizes in the Daily Telegraph Science Writer competition for a few years running and finally won the thing this year.
Hope that didn’t sound too CV-ish. Basically, I’ve found it a difficult area to break into, but I’ve really enjoyed self-publishing. While it would obviously be great to get paid mega-bucks for writing about science, I mainly do it because I really enjoy it. It’s also very freeing to write in a style of your choosing without editorial strictures.
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I don’t know how different/similar career paths in science writing are in the UK vs the US/Canada, but I thought I’d add a North American perspective here. I got my start as a science undergraduate student. I was lucky to be at a university in Canada that hired its own students to write about its research (for press releases, fundraising material, etc). I did that during my final year and for a few months after graduating. I also wrote a few pieces for the university newspaper.
That experience led to several valuable internships (including one at Nature!) in science writing in the US. Then I signed up for the science journalism program at Boston University and I’ve stuck around Boston ever since. That internship I did at Nature back in 2001 helped me establish contacts that played a part in me being hired fulltime with Nature two years ago.
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