Book Giveaway on Goodreads

Hi readers and writers,
If you'd love to read my memoir about breaking into science or know a young woman you'd like to inspire to keep trying and know it's possible to balance family and a demanding career, enter the Goodreads giveaway for Breaking Through the Spiral Ceiling here: http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/28876-breaking-through-the-spiral-ceiling.

There are just a few days left, and 10 books will be given away.  Right now, it looks like you have about a 1 in 10 chance of winning one.  Free free free, not even any postage and handling costs!

cheers,
Laura

Writing After Summer Special Olympics

Dear readers and writers,

My daughter is an intern at Special Olympics and we went down to Long Beach last weekend to be "fans in the stands" to cheer on all those participating at the basketball venue.  During the event, several insights struck me.  First, while competition seems to be the essence of sport elsewhere, and while there are loud cheers for each team playing at the Special Olympics, after the game no one really focuses on being "winner" or "loser."  Instead, the person who made the 3 point shot and brought the scores closer gets a lot of love, and also the other team gets warm greetings.  I'm entering a bunch of contests for writing this summer, and I have readjusted my mind to be happy for whoever wins.  Feels good!  Second, I noticed that no matter how uncoordinated and slow a player was, everyone kept him or her in the game.  And, that person knew the best player to pass the ball to when he/ she did get it.  Often that pass set up a basket.  Each person contributes something.  So, now, I need to focus on what I can uniquely do and say in my writing.  No, I can't be Louise Erdrich.  But that doesn't mean I can't learn to write what I have to say with beauty and memorable language.  Third, the teams usually had a mixture of men and women.  I'm talking about teams of all ages, up to adults.  I was skeptical at first, but it worked well.  Teams seemed to know what each player could do and capitalize on that.  Who-eee, we saw a girl a foot shorter than most of her teammates dribble down the floor and shoot a no-rim basket. So in everyday life, maybe we should focus on how we differ in order to use everyone's best efforts, not to pigeonhole people and ignore some of them.  I write another blog for women in science, and sometimes I need to tell myself how helpful a lot of men are and have been to women in science.  This cooperation we saw was a good reminder of that.   It was a lovely day, and I only cried once.  I highly recommend it...free, enjoyable, and helps the atmosphere for the athletes.  There's one every six months or so. Keep an eye open!  
cheers,
Laura

My Message from Postdoc Kate Sleeth

Hi friends of reading and writing,

My memoir was written to fill a vacuum of information about the lives of women who have successfully balanced family life and careers in science, and I've been gratified that quite a few schools and other organizations where young women congregate have invited me to speak about it, making that message more accessible.  So I was very pleased when recently a young postdoctoral fellow, Kate Sleeth, blogged about a talk I had given and about my book on the Stanford Medical School blog site, here:

 http://stanford.biocareers.com/bio-careers-blog/breaking-through-spiral-ceiling

When I wrote the memoir, I knew I couldn't keep harping on the same message or it would become boring immediately.  I was very pleased that Kate saw in the book and my talk those things I hoped women would get, even though I had backed off from hammering people over the head with them.  I feel that my life has been an interesting balancing act between being a serious scientist and professor on one hand and being a wife and mother on the other hand, so simply trying to recreate what it has been like for me is sure to bring the balance issue to the forefront.

I don't mean to address only young women in science; I hope that trying out the life of a female scientist is different enough from most people's experience that the memoir is worth reading for that alone, in the same way people read about a woman fishing boat captain or a woman secretary of state to find out how it is to live that life.  But my special "now hear this" audience has always been young women who might reject a career in science because so many people now say it cannot be combined with family life.  Yes, it can.  I know quite a few women who have put that combination together, and my memoir is a kind of existence theorem (yes, it's possible, see, I exist!) for one's ability to do it and be glad of the effort it requires. 
cheers,
Laura

Talking About My Life

When you write a memoir, you're deciding privacy is not so important to you.  Instead, you have a message you want to share with others, and you're willing to take the risk of revealing your secret life to achieve that goal.  Open secrets, things you never really wanted to tell anyone.  Suddenly, you find that people you don't know ask you why you did things you're ashamed of.  You have no answers, really, but you try to talk about what you think might have changed in you, so that now you would never do such things.  You can't be sure that's true.

Writing is a dangerous craft, and there is no way to do it without letting cats out of bags, taking the cover off the bed, letting the hidden be revealed.  Well, there is another way.  It's called boring.  If you want to compel your readers to live it with you, so they'll arrive in the place you are and understand your message, you must let go of your desire to remain safe.

So, when I went recently to Emory University's Oxford College to talk about my memoir, Breaking Through the Spiral Ceiling, I hoped it would be easy and safe. Of course, it was not, at least not altogether.  But I liked the way the students, especially women and students of color, felt it showed them a path worth considering.  I became a woman in science with a family, married and with kids, but still finding out the hidden ways the molecules of the universe work, why aging happens at the scale of molecules.  I talked with them about my student who committed suicide, my daughter who once asked, "Are you going to step on me, Mommy?" And my son, whose seventh grade teacher completely gave up on him, although his English aptitude scores were above 90%, because, as she said, "I know these black kids struggle with English."
They kept asking, "Didn't your family get in the way of your career?"  Of course it did.  But I kept both going because both were supremely important to me.  It was a struggle, no denying that.  And there were days when I had no idea if it would all fall apart.  But it didn't and I have the nerve to hope it would not for them either, if they decide they would love to be biologists with families.

Interview with Linley Erin Hall

LH: Can you tell us how you got interested in writing? I know you were into science back at Harvey Mudd College.

LEH: I started writing stories in the fourth grade, and although I wrote for the school newspapers in junior high and high school, I mostly wrote fiction. When I went to HMC, I thought I’d become a chemistry professor. I found biochemistry fascinating. But I didn’t enjoy lab work. Putting my science interest together with my writing skills was a great combination for me.

LH: What was your first success with writing?

LEH: I was a graduate student in the science writing program at UC Santa Cruz, and one of my internships was at The Californian, a small newspaper in Salinas. I was assigned to cover the visit of the Olympic Torch to the area, and my article ended up on the front page! That my article was important enough and good enough for the front page gave me a lot of confidence.

LH: What kind of things do you most enjoy writing?

LEH: The in-depth ones. I’ve written a lot of different kinds of nonfiction, but it’s more fun to dig deep into a subject, to tell a real story, than to write a 300-500 word article skimming the surface, although those are important too. I also still enjoy writing fiction, although I haven't had any published yet.

LH: Any experience with agents?

LEH: Not yet. I sold Who’s Afraid of Marie Curie without one. I wrote an essay about the hairs we leave behind, not science at all, for the magazine section of the Sunday San Francisco Chronicle. In the blurb about me at the bottom, I said I write about science and engineering. About two and a half months later, an editor at Seal Books emailed me, said she liked my writing style, and asked if I’d like to write a book for Seal about women in science. That contact grew into Who’s Afraid of Marie Curie. So I basically skipped one of the hardest parts of getting a book published. It’s almost like I cheated.

LH: What are your thoughts about marketing?

LEH: It’s the part of freelancing that I enjoy least. It’s hard to put yourself out there. There are so many people trying to reach your audience, you need to stand out from that background. Target your audience and be creative.

LH: If you could go back in time to when you started writing and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?

LEH: If you want to be a freelance writer, make a specific, detailed business plan. I sort of made one when I first made the leap into freelancing, but I could have avoided rough places if I’d done more research and planned more carefully up front. As for the writing itself, outline, outline, outline. Having a plan, even if it changes, makes writing both fiction and nonfiction easier.

LH: Thanks for sharing your thoughts on writing with us, Linley.