The Bitter Quill

No, not a paying gig. I’m talking about something intangible.

See, it’s easy for me to lose confidence in my abilities. (I’m guessing other writers are also plagued with this sort of doubt.) So often, the constraints of time are given priority over the desire to produce work of quality. Sometimes, even when time is not of the essence, it can seem so hard to fight for quality when so many around you are choosing the polysyllabic and ugly over the simple and clear.

I’m not saying that all long words are bad. It’s just that people should not be allowed to make them up simply because their active vocabularies are limited.

Pardon my digression. Where was I?

Ah, yes. My big accomplishment for this week is finishing a short piece of science writing. For this piece, my work entailed:

• Finding articles in the scientific literature dealing with my topic of interest
• Reading these articles and gleaning the relevant information from them
• Summarizing the relevant information in a format that a general audience will understand what I’m talking about
• Presenting the background material that a general audience probably doesn’t have

Ideally, the process goes exactly as I’ve described above, and a decent product comes out. This time, I think that may be the case. Of course, it’s hard to judge one’s own work and easy to be too critical or too fond. I am sure that if this piece ever sees print (or pixel—it has been sent off to a webzine) I will be instantly dissatisfied with my work. Still, it’s nice to finish a piece, to believe that it doesn’t suck, and to believe that maybe I’ve got it in me after all.

I must confess, I haven’t managed to finish reading a single book since the start of the year. I did start four books, which I am reading in small pieces, but it irks me that so far I haven’t managed to finish one. Instead, I am trapped in the middle of:

• Dubliners, by James Joyce.
• Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond.
• The Science Book, edited by Peter Tallack.
• Every Living Thing, by James Herriot.

Part of the reason I haven’t finished any of these is that I need what everyone else does: more time. I especially need more time—a nearly infinite amount, it seems—to catch up on my science reading. Every day there are new research articles, news stories, and blog commentaries to read.

Although keeping up is the biggest reading challenge, achieving balance is of equal importance. That balance can be lost if one dwells to long on the list of must-reads. Reading nothing but specialized or technical writing is a subtle danger.

Don’t get me wrong, such work is certainly real writing and real reading, but technical writing is often limited in the way it manipulates words. This narrowness occurs in part because medical, technical, and science writers always (or should always) strive for simplicity. It also happens because these writers are experts in a subject area rather than experts in a content area.

When reading creative writing, one has greater opportunity to find masterful writers who use techniques and words that aren’t commonly found in medical, technical, and science writing. Reading work that is more overtly creative allows a writer to re-immerse herself in the craft. Such reading replenishes the writing toolbox. Those words and techniques that aren’t common in specialized writing may still be useful later on, but you can’t use them if you don’t have them at the ready. The best writer is one who has a full toolbox, who knows how and when to use her tools, and who also knows how and when not to use them.

As for me, maybe I’ll have finished reading something by December. I’ll let you know.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Anju Kanumalla is whipcrack-smart. This will become rapidly apparent. Anju makes her living in a writing field that I’ll wager most of you don’t, and part of the reason that I invited her to join the Bitter Quill team was her unique and erudite perspective on the whole creative process. Read on for a little bit more on just exactly what the hell it is she does.

The title of this post is also the most common response I get when I tell people what I do for a living. I actually write in several genres, but right now medical writing is the only one for which I get paid. I also do a fair amount of science writing and some academic (mostly scientific) writing. Every once in a while I’ll also try out a piece of fiction or creative nonfiction.

“Medical writing” is a catch-all term for just about any writing related to health or medicine. This includes newspaper articles, patient materials, technical documents, clinical trial study reports, physician or pharmacist education materials, and internal documents for the pharmaceutical industry.

To become a medical writer, you (obviously) need good writing skills and some medical knowledge, but that doesn’t mean that you have to be a doctor. You should, however, be comfortable around scientific and medical concepts. From what I’ve observed, it’s easier to pick up the medical knowledge than to pick up the writing skills.

A science writer, as you’ve probably guessed, writes about science. However, this is writing for the general public. When the audience includes professionals or the writing is more technically detailed, it’s considered scientific writing. Research articles and grant writing are both forms of scientific writing. It’s worth noting, however, that some forms of medical writing can also be considered either science writing or scientific writing.

Like medical writing, science writing also requires both excellent writing skills and knowledge of content. My experience has been that it’s much harder to pick up scientific knowledge and that it needs to be actively studied.

Education and continuing education are very important with all of these fields, however, so it’s a good idea to always be working on your professional development. (Ideally, you should work on it more than I do.)

One last field worth mentioning is technical writing. Some medical and scientific writing also falls under the umbrella of technical writing. All three of these fields, and science writing as well, have several aspects in common. They usually require specialized skills, comfort with science and technology, and dedication. They also have similar concerns, such as readability and the need to translate concepts and technical language. All four can also be intellectually and (to varying degrees) financially rewarding.