Career Advice to a Molecular Biologist Starting to Write

If you want to write, you need to write.

Write and write some more.

Read the science media.

Fill your head with the best writing you can find. Read The New Yorker. Read annual anthologies of the best writing — not just science writing either. Here’s The Best American Essays of 2016.

Practice generating ideas on what to write every day. Especially after you read a science story and some really great writing that isn’t science. Look for ways to combine ideas.

Start a blog to demonstrate your writing skills.

Then guest post on blogs that are in your topic area. Start developing the relationship with those bloggers as soon as you start writing your own content.

Find the publications that you want to write or work for.

Follow the writers and editors on Twitter, Facebook, and Quora.

Develop relationships with them. Be transparent. Tell them you want to write for them. Ask them questions.

After you’ve developed those relationships, start pitching ideas. Pitch them lots of ideas.

Don’t have any expectations.

Remember, like writing, getting a job in writing is a process. The more you work on pitching, the luckier you’ll get. The more you write, the luckier you’ll get.

Remember that if you’re going to make a living as a writer, there are a lot more opportunities writing for companies. You can carve out a very nice niche writing for life sciences companies.

I don’t work in the media but work with and speak to people at publications regularly and I know there aren’t enough science-trained writers.

I wish someone would’ve given me this advice when I was starting out. It took me 10 years to figure it out.

Here’s my original answer.

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