Still no science
Well I said last week that it wasn’t a good sign and I was right. Once again, I haven’t managed to think of a single interesting science topic to write about. Although it’s not the interesting science topic that’s the problem; it’s the writing about it.
The thing is that I don’t particularly want to write about the chemistry-related topics that I usually write about. Not that my usual topics aren’t interesting, just that I thought it would be fun to write about other areas of science. As well as examples of science escaping into the wider world, like the blog on science in Heroes.
The downside to this is that I can’t just bash out the blog out based on what I already know. I’ll actually have to do some research and that takes up time that I could be spending doing paid work. That’s not to say I’m not taking this blog seriously, but it doesn’t currently earn me any money.
Being a science writer is much like revising for an exam. For a few days, you know quite a bit about the subject matter. But after writing the article or sitting the exam you quickly start to forget as you move on to the next thing (or at least I do). Obviously, you build up quite a bit of knowledge on areas you write about regularly, but anything even slightly outside these areas usually needs to be researched thoroughly to make sure you understand it properly and don’t make any embarrassing mistakes.
I read about science a lot, in the form of books, articles and press releases, and I have a pretty good working knowledge of most areas of science. But you really find out how little you understand when you have to write about a scientific subject. That’s when the holes and evasions in your understanding come to light, and they need to be sorted out before you can write the article. Especially as you usually need to understand the science to a greater depth than you’re writing about it in order to be able to explain it properly.
So either I make the time to do the research or I bash out blogs on subjects that I already know about, whether scientific or not. So far, I’ve chosen to do the latter and, to be honest, that will often continue to be the case, especially if I’m busy with paid work.
But I do also promise that I will make a concerted effort to incorporate more science into this blog. Although seeing as the only person I know who currently reads it on a regular basis is my brother, I could write about films every week and he’d be perfectly happy.
