Give Me A Shout

I started writing this blog as a response to the work of people like Sam Harris. At that time I had not envisaged that I would write so much on this. As a matter of fact, as the time has passed, I have started enjoying writing quite a lot. This is not to say that I did not like writing before. I have quite a bit of research experience in which I had to write substantially. Writing is one of the most interesting things about research. It is perhaps needless to say that reading and thinking are the other two interesting things about being a researcher. And yes I am forgetting all the hands on and thought experiments. 

But writing a blog or about anything that does not include hardcore technical writing has it own charm and, I must say, addiction. Indeed, it is fun to write on diverse topics. It is also quite fascinating to try to develop different writing styles and to use them in developing write ups probably to address a broader audience. Technical writing can be for a very few people who are domain experts.

I have been wondering for past some time that what would it be like to become a writer or to formally adopt writing as a professional choice. Of course, this is a bit of a leap from where one thinks that one could work as an all encompassing researcher to where one is merely a writer. But I never appreciated it before that becoming a good writer, if one can, is a far more exciting professional choice. This is not to say that I had never read, let's say, fiction or history books before. I had done that. But there was a time that I used to feel that writing fiction or becoming a journalist was something that anyone could do. In other words, I used to believe that becoming a researcher or a scientist was far more challenging and so I used to think that I must try to become that. But now I feel that becoming a writer is also a much better professional choice. And indeed it is also both challenging and fascinating at the same time.

I wonder if I can become, for instance, a Scientific American or Huffington's Post class writer. So if you can, or know someone who can, help me in any way in taking up writing as a profession, I would be grateful. If you can help me in honing my skills and/or winning a writing contract, please give me a shout.