freelance science journalist and author
Thoughts on writing
Most days, I’m writing about fairly serious—albeit very interesting—stuff. Like this week, for example, there are stories about nanomedicine, bilateral mastectomy, the development of strategic thinking in children, and the environmental hazards of microplastics. But every once in a while, an absolute gem comes along that makes it into my Tales For Dinner Parties folder. … Continue reading Weird, wacky, and wonderful
I record almost all of my interviews. I’m sure old-timer journos will be all … … at this breach of journalistic hard-assness, but I would recommend it for a number of reasons. Firstly, it means I get my facts and my quotes correct. There are few things worse than having a story run, then getting … Continue reading To record or not to record
Is it possible to be totally objective as a journalist? This is a major can of worms to open, but as I’ve recently written an article on homeopathy – a practice that flies in the face of everything I believe – it seems a timely question to ask. I’ve been involved in a few heated … Continue reading The Truth is in here?
This is a blog tour. A what? It’s a kind of blog chain letter, in this case, for authors. But it’s a lot more fun than a chain letter because you get to talk about yourself and then you get to plug your friends, which is a great thing to do. This particular blog tour … Continue reading Blog tour: How I Write
The stereotypical view of a scientific conference is generally a mind-numbing parade of semi-coherent individuals droning on at the floor about their pet piece of fringe research while a room full of sedated people sit there wondering when they can legitimately sneak out and enjoy the local tourism opportunities but still earn the requisite CPD … Continue reading Conference capers
Remember Roladexes? In this era of iPhones and Google, I was surprised to discover that they still exist. My memories of Roladexes tend to be of them appearing in movies, when a character was trying to look someone up, they would spin their Roladex like a roulette wheel and voila! The perfect name would be … Continue reading Your little black book
It’s a pretty hackneyed thing to write about how you’ve not written a blog post in ages, but I’m going to do it anyway. I’ve been busy. Not the kind of busy where you’re contentedly working through a list of things, but the kind of busy where you white-knuckle it from one deadline to the … Continue reading Love Sexy Money
This is the story of The End. I’m sharing it because before I had a book published, I had no idea how the whole process worked and I learned quite a few things the hard way (such as the fact that nothing happens quickly in publishing unless you’re the biographer of a prematurely dead celebrity). … Continue reading Diary of a (non-fiction) book
I’m writing an article about diversification in farming. WAKE UP! It’s not as boring as it sounds. It’s about a farmer who started out in egg production, then in an attempt to cut down overly high costs in one area of his business, he ended up developing a separate business in that area. Then his … Continue reading Diversify or perish?
When I first heard the term ‘pantsing’ I thought it was cutesy Gollum-speak (“yessssss, we is pantsing, my precioussssss”). But no. Turns out it’s writer-speak for ‘flying by the seat of your pants’, also known as discovery writing, also known as driving without TomTom, also known as writing without an outline. What is an outline? … Continue reading Plotting or pantsing?
Bianca Nogrady 