an interview with jonah lehrer

so guess what?! as you can see by the title, you guys get treated with an interview with jonah lehrer! he's written proust was a neuroscientist, how we decide, his own blog on wired.com, and contributes to radiolab and wired magazine, plus he quotes bob dylan. so an all around very cool guy, and lets all be sure to thank him should we ever meet him.

what journey did you take to become a science writer?
I became a science writer because I couldn't become a scientist. In fact, I was so bad at bench science that the post-doc I was working for (and he remains one of my best friends) used to joke that I "excelled at experimental failure". This ineptitude led me to think about science writing, which struck me as the best of both worlds, since I could continue to think about scientific ideas but didn't have to wear latex gloves, sacrifice mice, or worry about calibrating micropipettes. As Bob Dylan said, "There's no success like failure."

were you different from your peers as a teenager? did you have a hard time because of it?
I was a pretty big nerd. But my best friends were also pretty nerdy, so I didn't mind. Too much.

what advice would you give to teens who want to become science writers?
I'm afraid I don't have any good advice. I'm still learning how to write myself One thing I've learned, though, is that writing is a craft. There are no born writers. One has to practice and practice and practice. (That's why blogging has been so important for me - it's forced deliberate practice, with lots of critical comments!) And maybe, if you're lucky, your sentences will get a little bit better most days, a little bit more transparent and clear and readable. You will say more with fewer words. But there are no short-cuts. I'm convinced that, before you can write a good sentence, you have to write lots of really bad sentences, and then spend lots of time editing those sentences. So the writing process isn't always fun. But the upside is that, as a science writer, you'll get to ask some of the smartest people on the planet a lot of really naive questions. That's the best part of the job.