I'm Back!

Ok, time to revamp this blog. When I started it, I thought I'd use it as a repository for my old articles in the Mexico City newspaper The News, where I wrote a weekly column called Space-Time Chronicles, which ran from February, 1994, through May or June, 1999 . Then, as time went by --and more time went by-- I realized that that wasn't doing the trick for me --there was simply no motivation to post, especially since posting usually meant going through the 224 original articles and trying to choose one which was good enough to republish, and that, at the same time, I hadn't yet reused. I needed to get up to speed again and start writing in English again. The News tanked many years ago, and since then I've found no other outlet for my English-language writings. I love the English language as much as I love Spanish, and as much as I love the history and philosophy of science. Something in me was yearning to communicate in English again, so here's my chance. I am challenging myself to keep this up.

The time during which I published my column in The News was for me a time of learning the trade of science writer. It was also a very exciting time of experimenting. When I started, I was writing little essays on different aspects of the history of science, or commenting the scientific news if it was worth commenting (it rarely is, by the way, at least for a science writer who is not also a science journalist). Then, little by little, I started taking chances. I'd go out on a limb and write about my own experience as a science buff and a physics student. I'd use personal anecdotes to illustrate points (talking about yourself is a no-no among scientists; it is also frowned upon in Mexican society). Readers responded. Not that I got a lot of feedback in those days, before the Internet was widespread, but (to use personal anecdote as illustration again), I still have, tacked to the wall in front of the desk I'm using at this very moment, a beautiful photo of the Iztaccihuatl and Popocatepetl volcanoes that a reader sent me via the newspaper office when I wrote about my boyhood hiking trips . Readers were responding emotionally.

A scientist writes to convince, to rally forces to his or her side, not to stir emotions. A science writer, on the other hand, is, first of all, a writer. And a writer must use all the tools availabe to him to grab the reader's attention and keep it until the end, to touch the reader in as many ways as he, the writer, can. What I was doing was closer to storytelling than to scientific writing, and that was why anecdotes in general (and not only personal anecdotes) seemed to work so well, much better than explication and exposition of the technicalities of the science being discussed. It was a thrilling discovery.

Today I am aware that any science writer worth his salt knows this, but that doesn't make the discovery any less exciting.