The Dork Knight Rises

Not Exactly Rocket Science
By Ed Yong
Jul 23, 2012 8:05 PMNov 20, 2019 5:40 AM

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An old friend of mine found and forwarded an email that I had written on 22^nd August, 2006. I sent it to a group of close university mates, telling them about this new science blog that I had created. It makes me almost embarrassingly sentimental to read this, but hopefully it might help those of you who are in the same situation. Here is me, six years ago, working at a cancer charity, miles away from being a professional science writer, looking for opportunities, and taking a step. Also, note that 6 years ago, I knew even less than the little I know now, so if anything in this seems even remotely prescient, it’s probably best to interpret it as naivety that looks good in hindsight. The bit where I say “Hopefully, I’ll be able to write a new one every week” cracks me up.

Subject: Shameless self-publicity Wotcha. So. Over the last three years, I've written three non-work science articles and all three have won runner-up prizes in the Daily Telegraph's Young Science Writer competition. Which is cool, because it makes me think that I might be able to do this full-time. So, following kind encouragement from Alice and various friends, I've decided to put more effort into this science writing malarkey, stop waiting for others to publish my stuff, and do it myself. To this end, I've set up my own blog - go mighty Interweb, go! The plan is to fill it with feature-length science-related articles on whatever takes my fancy. It's been live for a week and has three articles thus far, and hopefully, I'll be able to write a new one every week. It's an outlet for me to flex a couple of interests - science and writing - and get some good practice in combining the two. It's also a chance for me to write without worrying about the usual constraints of accessibility, journalistic styles, finding stories that haven’t been covered yet etc. It's just me, writing for the sake of it, about stuff wot I find fascinating, in the discursive narrative style that I feel most comfortable with. So come on in, have a read, leave some comments if you wish. If you like it, come back often, or better yet, tell a friend. At best, you might find out something interesting. At worst, you'll be terribly bored and curse me for wasting your time, but you'll ramp up my hits and maybe Wordpress will send me a muffin. Or some such. -E

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