American Scientist

Essays are what drew me to science writing, although I didn’t realize it until after I’d left science for journalism. In high school I pored over features in National Geographic by David Quammen, who many consider one of the great nature essayists of our day. In college, as I majored in environmental science, my personal philosophies were most influenced by Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac and Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, both books crafted around a series of personal essays. Still, I’ve always been a little foggy about what makes these works so compelling to me.

Michelle Nijhuis deconstructs exactly these threads that tie together the many pieces of writing that can be categorized as essays. She breaks down what makes essays the perfect vessel for many writers to record their process of inquiry. Nijhuis has a personal style (See her wonderful essay about leaving her off-the-grid home of 15 years) and can bring clarity to subjects such as climate change and conservation whose stories seem, well, storied (See her award-winning essay “Which Species Will Live?”). And she also knows how to take the reader on a fun scientific exploration (I love her piece “Hacking the Breast Pump”).

Best of all, reading her new book, The Science Writers’ Essay Handbook, made me feel like writing. As she celebrates the beauty of the essay craft, Nijhuis stirs that place inside me that longs to write and has several story ideas squirreled away. By offering a kit of problem-solving tools and starting points for organizing one’s thoughts, Nijhuis empowers her reader, the writer.

Essays are best defined by what they are not, Nijhuis asserts in the first chapter. After detailing all the forms that don’t count as an essay (for example, the “five-paragraph essay” you might have written in a high school or college class, or a traditional news story), she describes the form as “stories that examine other stories.” To identify what makes an essay work, Nijhuis says, “Good essays have more in common with good science, in that they begin not with a thesis but more tentatively, with a question.” Indeed, she points out, the essay and the scientific method both arose around the same time in the 1600s and exemplify Enlightenment thinking. Before the 1900s, Nijhuis emphasizes, most scientists, including Charles Darwin and Ada Lovelace, wrote essays when describing their research results. As with science, a good essay satisfies through the journey of exploration, not the conclusion’s scope or certainty.

There are two chapters I find myself revisiting the most. One, titled “Structuring Essays,” provides a loose outline for any essay, which Nijhuis describes as an internal and external journey, and then offers examples. In the prologue of Rebecca Skloot’s book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, for instance, Skloot’s external journey involves spending 10 years researching Lacks’s involuntary donation of tissue and the effects it has on her descendents, while internally the author confronts her assumptions about race and science. Nijhuis’s outline leaves the reader with a readymade launchpad for a story, and it is helpful even for pieces that do not fit squarely in a traditional essay format. Indeed, I used Nijhuis’s outline to structure my interview questions before I spoke with engineer Marc Edwards about his work on the Flint water crisis, because I knew I wanted to relate his complicated emotional reaction to the unethical behavior he encountered with the changes in his research and teaching, much like an essay would.

The other chapter I find myself revisiting is called “Revising Essays,” which provides invaluable advice for editing one’s own writing—something I find challenging even as a professional editor. Nijhuis recommends giving your work three reads (yes, three) before sending one’s precious draft off to an editor. A favorite of her tips: If you need space from your own writing but don’t have time for it, watch a movie trailer before diving into editing (“Seriously—it helps!” she claims). Such tips, peppered throughout the book, are ones that only a seasoned writer can give after travailing the journalistic seas in less-than-ideal writing conditions.

Meant to be an add-on to The Science Writers’ Handbook, which Nijhuis cowrote with several colleagues (including American Scientist’s Robert Frederick), Nijhuis’s book does, in fact, stand on its own just fine: One doesn’t need to read the former before reading this one. While the rest of The Science Writers’ Handbook provides advice on the nuts-and-bolts practicalities of the writing career—from negotiating freelance contracts to pitching stories to working with editors—it generally avoids such explicit writing advice (although there’s plenty of both on the Handbook’s blog).

Nijhuis’s book, then, is a fine antidote for a tough case of writer’s block, as well as a solid resource for a science writing class or for any science writer seeking to improve their craft. For professional science communicators, it provides a pathway to step outside “the news voice” of modern journalism. For scientists, it can serve as a guide for exploring the enlightenment gained through personal narrative.

An excerpt from this review appears in the November–December 2016 issue of American Scientist.