science writing as literature

I believe in science writing as literature.

I said it. How brash is that? I look back to the definition of "literature": creative works of recognized artistic value (wordnetweb.princeton.edu). I know as a biologist I am supposed to wince at the thought of "creative" and that I should be concerned if my work is considered "artistic". I catch my breath, wondering if I dare think that "recognition" by readership is as important as by peers on a review team.  I squirm, wondering if I am in any position at all to judge "value" of my own work. But, as a regular contributor for a regional independent paper, I have to decide just that, with each and every submission. 

But on the 22nd October, I met another of the paper's deadlines with an article and photograph. Almost four years of writing to that deadline. For this last article, I spent months with it in the back of my mind. I planned to write something about remembering animals on the Day of the Dead (http://www.echo.net.au/opinion-piece/remembering-deaths-animals-and-our-loss). The research and photographic elements all came together and I laboured away. At around 400 words,  I realized I was in the same shoes as Hamlet, skull in hand, meditating on death and life.

I couldn't stop this  insight from sending ripples through my writing. Anymore than I could, in the previous work, avoid the Gothic elements (http://www.echo.net.au/opinion-piece/learning-follow-braid-freshets-sea). How wonderful to have a work published which actually begins with "it was a dark and stormy night". 

The following weeks,  I nervously watched the "letters to editor" to see if anyone was going to take me to task about any of this. Would my old English teacher groan, or laugh? What if one of the readers was my old thesis supervisor, a classic statistician?


But I take renewed courage in the origins of the word "literature", literally "an acquaintance with letters". I WILL be a biologist and writer who admits to being part of a culture, a society, a civilization and let this live in my work. I WILL take care and pride with grammar, with sentence structure and form, literary conceits, conventions of rhetoric -- all the skills of a wordsmith and orator. I WILL use for all I can that living bridge between science and arts: metaphor. 

As a global culture, if our knowledge truly matters, it must move us, as do our great literature and oral traditions.




I am also heartened to hear online an August interview with Dr. Carmen Lawrence looking at science writing as literature. (http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bookshow/stories/2010/2981992.htm)


I have a another deadline coming up Friday. Every article is work, adventure, sweat and blood. Sometimes the process is simple, but it can also be quite painful.  Try looking at a blank paper, screen, canvass, wall, stage -- and bring something to life. 

Here I go again. Renewed courage is useful right now.