I’m flattered to say that I’m the latest guest at the excellent site The Open Notebook, where veteran science writers Jeanne Erdmann and Siri Carpenter run deep-dive interviews with writers, bloggers and journalists about what underlies their stories.
We talk about how I got on the scary-disease beat, what journals I read, how I organize my materials — and what the emotional costs of this work are.
As bonuses, we’ve got a copy of my original pitch for The Enemy Within, my April 2011 Scientific American story on multi-drug resistance in Gram-negative bacteria; screenshots of some of the programs I use to keep track of my stuff; and — by far my favorite — a Soundslides of pictures I’ve taken in the field, overlaid with audio of me giving tips and telling stories. (It’s the first time Open Notebook has done multimedia, and we’re pretty excited about it.)
The Open Notebook is a fantastic resource; great science writers including my WiSci blog-sibling David Dobbs, Carl Zimmer, Robin Marantz Henig and Steve Silberman have all unpacked their stories there. I hope you’ll take a look.
