How Science Blogging Can Lead To A Science Writing Career

A few weeks back, Charles Choi wrote some fantastic posts about what makes a good professional science writer on this blog. You need to know where to go to find a good story, how to pick a good story, and then how to present the story effectively to your audience.

Another integral part of science communication, which has developed only fairly recently, is the community of science blogging. In the last few years, people like Carl Zimmer [The Loom], Ben Goldacre [Bad Science] and Ed Yong [Not Exactly Rocket Science] have been just as important to the breaking and digestion of scientific discoveries as ‘traditional' established publications. They're professional science writers too, but these blogs all started out in the same way: that anxious first post.

What I'm going to talk about here are the things that I've found helped me when I first started a science blog, because it's not always easy to stay motivated, or to get yourself noticed. Most importantly, I want to talk about how science blogging can lead to a science writing career, if you go about it in the right way.

Science blogging literally changed my life: a few years ago, after having obtained two degrees (Arts and Media), I was working an office job that did little for me but take care of my bills, and I still had no idea what I was going to end up being.

I'd started a blog with a friend a little while before that, to satisfy my need to write. We didn't have any particular theme, we just wrote about what we were interested in, which for me was explaining the discovery and behaviour of dinosaurs and other animals. With only a little science education under my belt, I'd taken on a lot: every scientific paper brought on more theories and terms I had to teach myself, and I was certainly in no position to be particularly confident about what I was doing. Perhaps even more challenging was finding the motivation to keep it up. This can be the hardest thing about blogging when you first start out, especially when you feel like there's no one reading your posts. There's no real trick to this, you just persevere-it's this commitment that refines your writing, and interests, and your ability to translate raw science into relatable text.

For the first 12 months, I was living off four hours of sleep a night, due to all the time spent finding good stories, and the following research that was required to edify and contextualise the story I had. I could see what a huge difference posting several times a week would have on the size of my audience. If you want to build an audience, you need to blog at least once a week-any less than this, and you'll see your audience numbers decrease rapidly.

This early period is where you figure out what makes your science blog different. You need to find your own voice, your own angle. For me, including outrageous animal dialogues in my posts gave my readers something unique, and made the scientific information more relatable, especially for those readers who weren't particularly science literate. I had high school students message me on Myspace (yes, Myspace) telling me they loved the posts (mainly because the animals all had atrocious language), but at the same time I'd have high school biology teachers asking if they could use the posts in their classes.

I began to see my audience grow to the very science bloggers I look up to, such as Bora Zivkovic, who would later ask me to join the Scientific American Blog Network. I began to feel a part of the science blogging community, and through Twitter was able to receive support from other science writers and do the same in return.

If you want to be a successful science blogger, Twitter is a must. Start following the science writers you look up to and respect, and don't be scared to engage with them. Science communicators can be an incredibly encouraging, supportive and inspiring bunch, so get involved and make yourself known to them. Have a browse through Khalil A. Cassimally's list of young science writers as a great starting point for people you should follow. You also need to be enthusiastic about the science blogs you love-through social media and by leaving blog comments, or by linking to them on your own blog. Do this, and you just might see your enthusiasm reciprocated. Just because people aren't reading and commenting on your blog doesn't mean they don't think it's very good, it's likely they just haven't found you yet, so speak up.

I mentioned perseverance earlier: if you really want something to come of your blog, you have to be absolutely committed to putting in way, way more than you'll get out of it for a long time. But it's ultimately worth it, because it's proof of your commitment to the industry, which is especially handy if you haven't had the opportunity to work in it professionally yet. In job seeking terms, it's not enough to tell a prospective employer that you're a hard worker and really passionate about science communication-that's what every other candidate will say. What will set you apart is the fact that you've been writing about science in your own time, and training yourself to be better at it; because you love it and you think it's important. In regards to my professional science writing experience, I was completely unqualified for the position I applied for at one of Australia's few science magazines, COSMOS, in 2010, but there was no questioning my enthusiasm for science communication, which helped me get the job.

You should also take advantage of opportunities to get your blog posts published elsewhere, such as competitions and anthologies. Submit your posts to The Open Laboratory anthology, which is published every year. Try your luck in the new Wellcome Trust Science Writing Prize and the New Scientist Prize for Science Writing. In 2010, I entered a national competition which sought to find the best science blogger in Australia, and ended up winning. Through that, one of my posts was included in the inaugural Penguin Best Australian Science Writing anthology, published by NewSouth Press in 2011. A few months later, one of the editors from NewSouth emailed asking if I'd ever thought about writing a book. Incredible things can come from blogging, but none of them will happen overnight. Just make sure you have fun and enjoy it in the meantime.

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Image credit: NewSouth Books