Dr. Kat Arney is a multi-award-winning science writer, broadcaster, and public speaker. She is also the founder and Chief Creative Officer of the science communication agency First Create The Media.
Kat is the author of three popular science books, the critically acclaimed Herding Hemingway’s Cats: Understanding how our genes work, How to Code a Human, and Rebel Cell: Cancer, Evolution and the New Science of Life’s Oldest Betrayal. She presents the Genetics Unzipped podcast for The Genetics Society and has fronted several BBC Radio 4 science documentaries.
Kat holds a degree in natural sciences and a PhD in developmental genetics from Cambridge University.
1. Hi Kat. You have a degree and a PhD from Cambridge University. You also did postdoctoral research at Cambridge and then at Imperial College. What prompted you to leave academia? Did you know you wanted to write for a living?
I came to the realisation that while I loved science, I was really not cut out to be a lab researcher. I’m very clumsy and have a short attention span, so the kind of focus and discipline that’s required to be an academic researcher is not something that I’m gifted with. I had trained for the best part of a decade for a career as a research scientist, and I had always, deep down, thought I was on the pathway to becoming a professor one day. Overcoming that sense of failure was hard. Around that time, I was lucky enough to meet some amazing people through the Association of British Science Writers who showed me that it was possible to have a career that involved science but didn’t necessarily involve doing experiments.
I come from a family that has always been soaked in literature and performing, as well as science, and I always enjoyed creative writing at school. I wasn’t entirely sure that I wanted to make a career as a science journalist (especially as it seemed impossibly hard to break into), but I did know I wanted to use the skills that I had already been developing. The boss of the lab where I did my postdoc, Dame Amanda Fisher, was also very encouraging of science communication activities.
2. You then spent over a decade as part of the comms team at Cancer Research UK. How did you make the move from research to communications so smoothly?
When I was looking for routes out of the lab, I applied for various science-adjacent jobs, such as medical writing and journal editing, but they didn’t really excite me. When I was offered a junior role in the science communication team at Cancer Research UK in 2004, it was my dream job. I got to spend all day learning about amazing research, talking to scientists, reading, writing, and speaking about science – all the things I had loved doing when I was a researcher– so I just got stuck straight in and never looked back.
3. Ed Yong also worked at Cancer Research UK before becoming a full-time freelance science writer. Was there something about the place that nurtured science writing? How did your experience there help prepare you for your freelancing career?
Cancer Research UK was really very special in terms of the way that they attracted and nurtured writing talent. It was a formative time in the growth of science communication as a field. When Ed Yong, Henry Scowcroft, and I set up the Cancer Research UK Science Update blog, it really was a very new thing that other charities weren’t doing at the time, and the journey to actually being allowed to do it was not smooth or swift. However, when we launched, we quickly gained many thousands of views and won a hatful of awards. It justified our vision and persistence, and I’m delighted to see it still going from strength to strength today. Over the 12 years I was at CRUK, I got to work with different departments and functions, from working with the marketing teams to giving talks to rooms full of hundreds of people, training researchers in communication, setting up a podcast back in the days before people even listened to podcasts, and being a principal media spokesperson, all of which enabled me to develop different aspects of my science communication skills.
4. Leaving a job to become self-employed is a terrifying leap. How did you make a success of it?
Even though I loved my job, I wanted to talk about more than just the world of cancer research. I was freelancing with various jobs while I was still at Cancer Research UK, such as presenting podcasts and various writing and radio gigs. When I signed a deal with Bloomsbury Sigma for my first book in 2014, I knew from talking to other authors that I had to do everything in my power to use the publication as a springboard to launch my freelance career, but it was still nerve-wracking making the final decision. When I handed in my notice on 4th January 2016, I only had enough guaranteed work to pay my rent each month but not any of my other living expenses, so I had to work really hard to build up a base of reliable work that would make up the rest. I’m pleased to say that I managed to make a success of it right from the start, although that first year was more than a little crazy, as I took on almost everything that came my way and also did around 60 talks across the country based on my book.
5. What advice would you give others contemplating leaving full-time employment to work as a freelance science writer?
If you can, build up your portfolio while you are still in a steady job while being mindful of any possible conflicts of interest. At Cancer Research UK, we had an informal “Ed Yong Rule” (developed when Ed started building up his blog, Not Exactly Rocket Science), which said that we could do freelance work on the side but it couldn’t be about cancer.
I often say that the world of freelance writing is unpredictable, but it isn’t random. You can make choices that influence your work and the income that you make. In practice, this meant treating myself like a business. I worked out what income I needed to earn over the year to equate to at least what I was earning when I had been at CRUK, then used an online calculator to break it down to a day rate that included tax, holidays, time off sick, etc. Then I knew that if I were working that number of days per month for that day rate, then I would hit my target and my budget.
Another thing that’s really important to do is always set aside a decent chunk of any money you get in, I’d say at least 25%, to cover your tax bill and any other unexpected expenses — and don’t forget to pay into a pension!
I would also add that one thing I do find frustrating is the systematic undervaluing of science communication work in the UK. I have always been mindful of making sure that my work is valued, both personally and financially, and paid people as fairly as possible when I’ve been in a position to offer them work.
6. How do you make time for writing books along with everything else?
I wrote Herding Hemingway’s Cats while I was still working at Cancer Research UK, so I ended up using most of my annual leave and weekends for research trips and drafting. I did the last big push on writing it in a period of unpaid leave, which was financially challenging, but I knew it was what I had to do to get the book finished so I could take the next step in my career. I then wrote another book, How To Code A Human – a school library version of Herding Hemingway’s Cats – towards the end of the first year that I was a freelance. That was done for a flat fee and on a very tight timeline, so I just had to get my head down and get it done. The most challenging one was writing Rebel Cell because, by that point, I was already running my science communication agency, First Create The Media, and had to take time off from my own business to research and write the book. I managed to get the bulk of the writing done in a couple of months at a blistering pace while also trying to hold the business together in its earliest days. I would not recommend it.
Every so often, I think I would like to write another book. I have taken a little time out over the past year to make a three-part BBC Radio 4 documentary series based on Rebel Cell called Bug In The System, but even that amount of time put a really big burden on the rest of the team and myself so I don’t think I will be doing it again in a hurry.
7. Then, you took another terrifying leap and set up your own company. How did that come about?
I went freelance in March 2016, and within two years, I was lucky enough to have more work coming in than I could deal with, I ended up bringing people on board to help me and then realised I was running a business! I founded First Create The Media in June 2018 as a science communication agency focusing on the life sciences and delivering writing services and science communication training. We’ve been through constant change since then, growing from a team of two: myself and Sarah Hazell, who I originally got on board to help out with the finances and delivering training after working together with her at CRUK and realising she’s the most awesome, organised person I’ve ever met. I’ve also been lucky enough to be supported every step of the way by my partner Martin Robbins – he acts as our strategic advisor who helps us see the bigger picture and navigate the startup journey.
Today, First Create The Media is a team of 10 people, ranging from part-time to full-time. It has been an incredible journey with a lot of stress along the way but I’m really proud of the team that I’ve built and the culture that we’re growing.
8. Business acumen seems to run in families. Do you feel like you were a born entrepreneur? Has anyone else in your family started their own business?
I have always been a hustler, and I love helping people and doing things that make them happy, which I think is a trait that runs in my family. The biggest thing I have tried to do is hire amazing people who can do what I can’t and get out of their way. I also took a very conscious decision to give myself the role of Chief Creative Officer rather than Managing Director or CEO because really my heart lies in the science communication work that we do.
9. Of all the things you’ve done, what’s been the most rewarding (spiritually, financially, or both!)?
Without a doubt, the most spiritually rewarding thing I’ve done is growing the team at First Create The Media. Every single one of them is smashing, and I’m so thrilled and grateful that they are willing to come along on the rollercoaster that is life in a small agency.
Financially speaking, the things that pay well also take up a lot of time and energy, so it all evens out in the end. Much more than the money, I love feeling that we’re really making a difference for our clients, helping to get amazing ideas and innovations out into the world so they can help patients and improve health.
I’m also incredibly proud of my last book, Rebel Cell, which I think genuinely pulls together a new synthesis for how to think about cancer in the context of the human body and the wider sweep of evolution. It’s so humbling when people talk to me about how it’s changed their view of cancer, whether researchers, doctors, or patients, and I hope it continues to be useful as the field evolves (pun intended).
Author-
Ananyo Bhattacharya is a science writer who has worked at the Economist and Nature.Before journalism, he was a medical researcher at the Burnham Institute in San Diego, California. He holds a degree in physics from the University of Oxford and a PhD in protein crystallography from Imperial College London.
Editor– Roopsha Sengupta
Cover image- iStock
