Tag: writing

The Sprawl Trilogy

Netflix just started airing Altered Carbon. It’s a rad take Richard K. Morgan’s 2002 cyberpunk novel. One of my favorite genres, cyberpunk typically explores how the street repurposes tech, life in cyberspace and off-planet. Last fall, I reread William Gibson’s Sprawl Trilogy – Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive. (Neuromancer, BTW, is credited with […]

2017: A Year Wraps and Good Riddance

Good Riddance 2017 It was a good year, but not without its challenges. The TL;DR is: mL grew more than 10 percent but is still down from its 2015 high. I co-authored and published What’s Your Bio Strategy? I moderated a panel at SynBioBeta SF17 and keynoted at Biofabricate 4 and enjoyed it. I now […]

First Drafts: The Ugly, The Bad and The Good

Writing first drafts sucks. For the past few months, I’ve been co-writing What’s Your Bio Strategy? with SynBioBeta founder John Cumbers. We just completed the first draft. It feels monumental. The process of writing a first draft is an epic like Sergio Leone’s classic spaghetti Western The Good, The Bad and The Ugly – one of […]

Career Advice to a Molecular Biologist Starting 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 […]

30 Things I Did Before Turning 30

In anticipation of my 54th birthday, I answered this question on Quora: What are the 30 things you did before turning 30 in your life? Learned to skateboard ramps and pools. Memorized every ditch and was part of an informal word-of-mouth network that knew when a new ramp appeared in Ventura. Convinced my parents to drive […]