Chemist or Writer? My Chem Coach Carnival Contribution
Okay, I’ll admit it. I’m late. See Ar Oh started the Chem Coach Carnival for National Chemistry Week last week. While I was at the ScienceWriters meeting this weekend, Chemjobber nudged me to participate. So here’s mine. Better late than never, right? Your current job. I’m a freelance science writer and editor. What you do [...]
Webb of Science moves South
Summer turned out to be a little crazy at Webb of Science. My husband got a new job, and we’ve moved South to Chattanooga, Tennessee. So my blog needed to go on hiatus, and I’ll be shifting my focus a bit. Instead of hearing about New York City, you’re more likely to get a slice [...]
Science Communication Without Borders: reflections on ScienceOnline 2012
I’m hardly a newbie to science communication. But last week was my first trip to ScienceOnline. The energy buzzing around that conference for 72 hours made me flash back a decade to when I was still in a chemistry Ph.D. program but desperate to reboot my career without leaving science behind. At that point, I [...]
A ruler among science books
Though I’d read the excerpt adapted for the New York Times magazine, picking up The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee, with its regal and imposing title, was just a little intimidating. But open the first page and the language propels and compels the reader to follow the disease, its [...]
Stop, Think and Listen
So, who is your audience? My whole workday can be focused around that simple yet complicated question. As I’m crafting a stream of words for an article, I’m lining them up against a mental picture, a mini-dossier, of the person will read them. On any given day, I might spend my morning writing sentences for [...]
Treating a reporter well: a case study
Scientists wear many hats, and taking the time to talk to a reporter adds one more task to their day or week. So I’m especially grateful when scientists make it easier to do my job and get the facts right. Here’s the backstory from earlier this week: I had some particularly thorny questions and wasn’t [...]
Science, humanities, and education
On this day before Thanksgiving, my brain simmers as I think about the importance of a well-rounded education for human society, creative innovation, and even curious individuals. In the last few days, David Kroll has cross-posted on his blogs about this move and one prominent response. I’ve already commented briefly on his blog, but the topic [...]
The Origin of this Science Writer
Last week, Ed Yong at Not Exactly Rocket Science started a post that’s collecting the stories of how science writers came to this particular career. I finally got around to adding my contribution, which I’m reposting with relevant links. At 16, I published my first article of science writing, a profile my high school chemistry [...]
Blogathon Haiku day
As part of the WordCount Blogathon, today we’re all embarking on haiku posts. I really should let my inner science poet out a little more often. Today, I decided to riff on the my writing process of taking my research– the papers I’ve read, the experts I’ve talked with– and synthesizing that mix into a [...]
Making sense of 200,000 gallons per day
How much? It’s one of those basic journalism questions, but when it comes to many science stories, it can be a tough one to answer in meaningful way. In most of my writing and reporting, I’m trying to find analogies to describe features smaller than the eye can see. But on the macroscale– like with [...]
