FAQ

Do you have any advice for breaking into science writing?

First, write: Writing is generative, and the only way to develop your skills is to do more of it. Especially when you’re starting out, don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Write, finish, write more.

Second, the tricks and techniques that writers use are usually very transparent and are there on the page. They can be reverse-engineered by carefully analyzing and deconstructing work that you deem to be good.

If you want more advice, and a lot of origin stories, check out this page from The Open Notebook. But as a caveat, I’m not sure how useful it is to get advice of this kind from people who are a few decades into their careers and who broke in during a very different media and jobs environment than exists today. Beware of getting stories tinged by survivor bias and unacknowledged luck and privilege.

Do you have any advice for young journalists?

In 2020, the National Press Club Journalism Institute asked me this question. Here’s what I wrote.

Above all else, work to the highest possible standard, always: Protect your work and your work will protect you. ~ Be professional: File your copy on time, to word count. ~ Park downhill at the end of the day, leaving a sentence or paragraph or piece unfinished so you don’t wake to an empty screen. ~ Cherish good editors: Don’t be precious about your words, and find the people who make your words better. ~ Actively deconstruct the work of good journalists in an attempt to decipher and reverse-engineer what makes their writing sing. ~ Pay attention to structure, and learn how to report well; remember that most writing problems are actually structuring problems, and most structuring problems are actually reporting problems. ~ Embrace nuance, and convey uncertainty. Ignore easy answers in search for deeper truths, but don’t fall prey to cheap contrarianism. ~ Recognize that you will often know relatively little about what you’re writing about, so be humble, and learn interview techniques that will delineate, probe, and stretch the limits of your own knowledge. ~ Be accurate and nuanced, but know when to let a piece go and move on to the next thing. ~ Note that it is better to be right than to be first, but it’s nice to be both. ~ Remember that you’re not writing to impress your sources or other journalists; you’re writing to help your readers make sense of the world. Take that responsibility seriously; view journalism as a profession and a craft whose standards you must uphold. ~ Prize thoughtfulness over salaciousness, depth over volume, light over heat. When you make mistakes, correct them quickly and transparently. ~ Remember that women exist, that minorities exist, that disabled and queer and trans people exist; interview them, tell their stories, and don’t do what the majority of journalists do which is to disproportionately give voice to loud white men. ~ Judge your peers for the quality of their work, rather than judging their work based on who they are; aim to be judged according to the same standard. ~ Give your loyalty to people and not to institutions; the former probably care about you and the latter probably do not. ~ Be extremely mindful about how you use social media, reaping in all its benefits as a reporting tool while skirting around its pitfalls as an emotional void. ~ Be cautious about all the advice you receive, including this, recognizing that everyone is speaking to you from some combination of luck and privilege. ~ Recognize your own luck and privilege, and work to uplift others around you. ~ Accrue social capital so you can spend it on people. ~ Be bold. Be fearless. Be kind. Be kind to yourself. ~

Do you have any advice for getting a book deal?

Get an agent. Get an agent. Get an agent. Get an agent before you write the book. Get. An. Agent.

… Do you have any advice for getting an agent?

  • See who represents your faves. Think about which books you’d be proud to sit next to on a shelf. Look at the acknowledgments of those books and see who represents those people. You’re not just looking for names, but for effusiveness of praise. Everyone thanks their agent; I would give a kidney to mine.

  • It’s about vibe. You want to find someone who you get on with, and who understands your ideas. Their attention is not enough. You should feel that they get you—like really get you—and that they are reflecting your ideas back at you in a way that’s enriching. If you talk to them and find yourself going, “Yes! Yes, that’s exactly it,” that’s a good sign. If you find yourself repeatedly saying, “No, that’s not quite it,” take that as the red flag that it is. Shop around. Having one interested agent is great. You shouldn’t just leap at the first one, but if the vibe is good, maybe that’s fine.

  • Have high expectations! An agent should: get you money; help wrangle all the contractual stuff you do not expect; and act as a sounding board for your ideas as you wrangle them. Some people only do the first thing, and honestly, you can do better. It’s not too much to expect them to be able to do all of those things, and it pays to be selective. If your book sells out but there’s no stock anywhere, your agent is the person who bellows at the publisher on your behalf. If some fucking tech company creates an AI bot based on you without your permission—and yes, this has happened—your agent will advise you on your legal recourse. Ask prospective agents how they approach their relationship with their clients.

Will you consider blurbing my book?

I really want to help other writers, especially in a tough non-fiction market. To manage expectations, I usually get 3-4 requests for blurbs every week, I’m almost always overwhelmed by them, and I often have to say no to people who are personal friends and/or professional connections. That said, feel free to shoot your shot at edyong210 [at] gmail [dot] com.

Will you write for my publication, bearing in mind that we cannot pay you?

Lol, no.