SUMMARY: Popular Scientific Writing

["David Bazell" <bazell -at- home -dot- com>]

Thanks to all of you who responded to my query about where to market popular
scientific writing.  I received a lot of good suggestions and I will
summarize them here for those of you who are interested in this topic.

Dick Margulis suggested looking in Writer's Digest and Writer's Market
publications.  He also suggested that what I was describing as my interest
was close to science journalism.  Dick mentioned radio media such as CNN and
NPR as well as publications such as Scientific American.  To this I will add
Science, Nature, Technology Review, and Science News as other possibilities,
though I have not investigated them all.

Dick also suggested looking into writing science textbooks at the
elementary, secondary or college level.  That was interesting, I thought.

Michael Shea's suggestion was to search for companies that write technical
proposals in the science arena.  These could be government contractors or
people at universities.  My experience is that, at least in astronomy, many
people write proposals on their own.  I have seen employment adds from
medical institutions looking for proposal writers, however.

Apparently there are lists of mailing lists that you can search.  Sherrin
from Townsville, in Queensland, Australia suggested I search Liszt and PAML
for science writing lists.  This seems like a good idea to me.  I have found
TECHWR-L to be very helpful in the short time I have been reading it, so
other lists might also be helpful.  I love the fact that I can sit at home
in my office and Maryland, USA and talk with people in Australia, people I
would never meet otherwise!  Sherrin included the following web sites as
being of potential interest:

http://www.writersdigest.com/catalog/mag_frame.html
http://www.writing-world.com
http://mav.net/guidelines/other.shtml

Salette Latas sent me an job add for an Education Outreach Officer at the
National Solar Observatory.  This made me think of the many federally funded
programs that need help convincing the public that their tax dollars are
being well spent.  I am making a list of such programs for further
investigation.

Geoff Hart pointed out that I should have specified if I was looking for
freelance or full-time employment.  I am looking for the latter.  He
suggested looking for people doing the scientific research or doing
technology transfer.  Geoff mentioned New Scientist as a good source for
publishing science articles.  He also pointed out that attending annual
meetings in certain fields of interest is a good marketing/networking
technique.  And, he added, try to get to be an invited speaker or to host a
session on popular science writing.  Geoff followed up by mentioning the
AAAS and American Chemical Society meetings that are coming up soon.

Steve Jong said that it sounded like I might be looking for a staff writing
position at a technical publication.  I have considered looking at some
publications like Physics Today and IEEE spectrum.  These are the two that I
have come up with.

Technical writing in the aerospace industry was suggested by Bruce Byfield.
That seems reasonable, but I am not sure who to call.  I suppose each
company has an office of technical communication or a PR office or some
such.  Perhaps that would be a good start.

Bob Allen, who works for Pacific Northwest National Lab, suggested searching
out government agencies like the Dept of Energy or Dept of Defense since
they publish a lot of material on what they, often in the form of technical
reports, brochures and web pages.  Again my question is, to whom do I speak?

Lois Patterson pointed me to the National Association of Science Writers web
site http://www.nasw.org/.  They have a lot of interesting stuff there.  I
also was able to track down the DC science writers association,
http://www.dcswa.org

So I clearly have my work cut out for me.  Plenty of leads and ideas here!
I have also been reading a couple of new publications, "Best American
Science Writing, 2000" and "Best American Science and Nature Writing, 2000."
There is also a 2001 version of each of these, I believe.  These have a host
of articles written by very good writers.  They also list where they
articles were published.

Once again, thanks to all of you who responded.  I hope this summary is of
use to a few of you with similar interests to mine.

Dave


^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Sponsored by eHelp Corporation, makers of RoboHelp - the industry standard
in Help authoring. Download a trial version today or get special savings when 
you buy the RoboHelp 2002 Holiday Edition. Visit http://www.ehelp.com/techwr

---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot-  Visit 
http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.