Marisa Wikramanayake

Scientology, R2-45s & my articles for 3rd Degree

Marisa — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 14:43:30 +0000

It’s been a busy week.

I have spent the last two weeks interviewing, researching and tracking down information on Scientology, suppressive persons and suppressive person declares (actual list here) and these little orders called R2-45s which basically refer to any Scientologist being able to shoot someone through the head with a .45 Colt Pistol for the sake of freeing that person’s soul or “thetan”.

I have talked to Scientology representatives and breakaway members and to former members and people who protest against the Church of Scientology’s activities. The first two groups maintain that R2-45s are a joke despite it been listed as a means of dealing with people on some orders declaring certain people to be enemies of the organisation or “suppressive persons”.

The second two groups maintain that the Church is dangerous to its members and to those who oppose it.

Breakaway members even side with protesters and former members in stating that there is a lot of violence that goes on within the Church.

And then the Church goes and does absolutely mad things like inform the Australian Government that it does not want to comply with employee rules and regulations because it somehow isn’t fair to people who volunteer their time with the organisation despite the Fair Work Act making plenty of provisions for volunteers. Only a few months ago it claimed quite wrongly that the new Mental Health Bill in Western Australia would allow children as young as 12 to be sterilised.

So why am I doing all this work? To write this article for 3rd Degree.

I am completing a Master in Communications degree at Edith Cowan University, in Western Australia. As part of the entire course, I am taking a class that requires me to write articles on a weekly basis for 3rd Degree. I like to do the best I can on the articles I write.

So if you assign me something potentially juicy like this, there is no way I am not going to dig for more. There is no way I am not going to talk to members of Anonymous or go diving into the depths of Wikileaks a bit more.

So if I haven’t been around, I have been playing in the huge sandpit that 3rd Degree has been for me, trying my hand out on all sorts of articles in each section. And occasionally as I dig in the sand, I find something precious.

Read the article – let me know what you think.

I need your help!

Marisa — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 21:32:12 +0000

I need your help.

I am currently investigating the working practices of science journalists when they cover stories in the neuroscience fields for my Master of Communications degree at the University of Edith Cowan in Western Australia.

I need science journalists and neuroscience researchers and scientists to help me out. I have separate surveys designed for each group that will only take five minutes each to complete. All the ethics and consent information is on the first page of each survey.

Your identity is not recorded in any way. If you take the surveys you have my undying gratitude and the ability to brag that you have made the world a better place and done something for either the media in helping them improve or for your neuroscience colleagues in ensuring that their work gets reported fairly and accurately.

So if you are a neuroscientist or a researcher in the field, please click here.

If you are a science journalist, please click here.

Thank you,

Marisa Wikramanayake

Response to Catherine’s 10 questions

Marisa — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 16:24:42 +0000

Catherine Jan posed a few questions to find out about other bloggers’ practices.

Here are my attempts at answering her questions:

1. Do you correct grammar and spelling in people’s comments?

This is going to sound odd because I will correct you if you’re speaking to me or writing to me otherwise but in comments I will leave it be. Even in comments on my site where I profess to be an editor/journalist/grammar and spelling nazi in disguise.

But no, in comments, I leave it be because I feel it’s being a bit too mean. Generally I correct people only when I can pick up on the fact that I can do it in a way where it doesn’t come across as a harsh criticism. You can do it in a private conversation but not on the internet in a public forum while singling one person out.

I also suspect that most people who do comment on my site, do double check their spelling & grammar anyway prior to commenting just because they know “OMG I am on Marisa’s/a writer’s site and I will not hear the end of it if I get it wrong.”

2. Do you get generic praise so that people can link to their own sites?

Yes. A lot of the sort of spam stuff – “I really like your article on this topic” type thing when it’s just a random post saying “Go look at this!”. Anything like that or with random strings of letters and numbers in any of the fields tends to get put into the spam pile.

Otherwise I am fine with people putting in links and things so long as their comment is relevant, makes sense and adds to any sort of debate that goes on.

3. Do you get emails from weirdos?

Yes. All the time. Gmail’s spam filter gets advanced classes from me in filtering this stuff out, I swear.

4. Do you have an editorial calendar?

Yes. I attempt to. I often also fail miserably. So it’s not set in stone. My readers tend to come back anyway and get excited. Which is lovely of them.

5. Do you get plagiarized?

Yes, I do. And I do keep an eye on this.

6. Do you ever run out of ideas?

Yes and no. Part of my problem is having my site(s) keep up with the different turns my life and career tend to take. So it’s not so much getting ideas but organising them in a fashion that remains somewhat static despite other things changing so at least my readers aren’t totally confused as to where to find what.

7. Do you accept guest posts and/or write guest posts on other blogs?

I do and am always up for writing guest posts on other blogs. At the moment I am not up for accepting guest posts on my blog unless it’s an absolutely stellar piece of writing on writing, editing, journalism or the bits behind science journalism for my science blog.

8. Do you write with SEO in mind?

My blog is set up with SEO in mind which means I just have to remember to drop in keywords about whatever my post is about in a particular field when I write it out before I hit “publish”. After that, it’s pretty much a no brainer. I find that if you do the work at the start when you set things up, it’s pretty easy to maintain afterwards.

9. Do you buy your images from stock photo websites?

No, I don’t buy images. I try to use my own or I use images from Flickr’s Creative Commons and sites such as there and make sure I credit the photographer and caption them right and link to them. Sometimes I prefer to link to the photographer’s profile on Flickr because sometimes they take down/upload/rotate their pictures.

I have just inherited a new camera so using my own is now becoming much easier to do.

10. Do you think blogging is worthwhile investment?

I think so. I started in 1998. I have learnt a lot about technology and website design, creation and promotion along the way that puts me far ahead of a lot of other people in my field. I had an online readership of 1000 people and offline of 100,000 per week before 2008 when I switched to this website. My readers moved with me and on a good day I get 400 to 700 hits per post provided that it’s a good post.

It’s also a good way of showing employers that you are all thing internet savvy (hi, potential employers!).

I hope this answered your questions Catherine. Thank you for the questionnaire!

My letter to Sir David Attenborough

Marisa — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 16:15:06 +0000

The background: Sir David Attenborough was asked to extend his Australian tour/visit to Perth. While it’s still being sorted out, someone started up this website where people who may never get to meet him otherwise can still say what they want to say, even if it’s just “Thanks for inspiring me.” My letter, reproduced in full below, went live on the website here a few minutes ago.

The letter:

Dear Sir David,

When I was very young, I remember that one of the very first books that I started reading – we’re talking turning the pages by myself here – was the atlas. This wasn’t just any atlas, it had lovely pictures of the food chain and the food web and I could never really stomach the photographs of the snake eating the frog.

Years later, I forgot to wear gloves and stuck my bare hands into the lovely sticky, slimy, gooey innards of a cow’s digestive system. I was too excited, you see, and being as I gesticulate when I talk, the two boys in the class were the most squeamish as I attempted to explain that I was just being absent minded. It was also the same year I memorised my entire Geography textbook for my London Advanced Levels.

If we fast forward, I was soon getting too excited over granite (I still do) and the similarity between the geology between the Indian subcontinent and Western Australia, I was looking at anticlines in northern American states and surreptitiously attempting to scratch garnets loose out of the rocks in Central Park. The best thing I learnt in my eight year long attempt to get an undergraduate degree was learning to tell the difference between the skulls of different hominid species. When I went to the Museum of Natural History in New York, I didn’t go to see dinosaurs or ammonites or even rocks, I went and stood in front of Lucy, who was in a small narrow corridor, for hours. And I remember thinking how weird it was that all these vastly different things could be connected and then even more so in my brain where they registered and were tagged emotionally with a “Things I love about the world I live in” label.

Things like Lucy, the Beatles, hominid species, granite, garnets – my brain is like a giant map, ever expanding, with “Here there be dragons” scrawled on the edges and I keep scrambling, like the early privateers did, to fill in the blanks with more ideas. I love ideas – I am a fan of ideas, not necessarily of people per se though I like them well enough. It’s why I preferred to leave Lennon be in peace in Strawberry Fields while I sat on a rock not too far away wondering if I would dare break the law of taking the garnets out of the park.

But I am weird. I am a nerd for knowing these things and more and I am the weird sort of nerd because growing up in the 80s and 90s in Sri Lanka, there were definite things you could be a nerd about. I was already breaking convention being the wrong gender.

Sir David, the world is changing. These days to utter a fact either gets you the wrong sort of look where you’re apparently just stark raving mad or trying to boast. Even worse, it can get you a completely unwarranted disproportionate reaction of awe. People think you are the smartest person on the planet for merely knowing something you learnt in primary school such as that Pi is 3.14 recurring and is an irrational number. What I am trying to say, Sir David, in no doubt the most convoluted way possible (my apologies), is that the majority of people have the capacity to know all this but either don’t want to or have their heads filled willingly or otherwise with all sorts of other things such as which celebrity dyed their hair red this week.

And that leaves me in the odd position of feeling a tad insecure about my love of all things factual. Which is where you come to the rescue – yes, you Sir David. I am not the sort of person to have watched every single film or series you ever produced and I wasn’t necessarily able to growing up but I am aware of your impact. I cannot truthfully say that you inspired me because, well, you didn’t BUT what you did do for me was far more important.

You validated my obsession with facts and knowledge of all sorts. You and a handful of others were the proof that there were people like me who tended to go somewhat stir crazy over things when others didn’t. That there were people who could be very easily be doing one thing with others, only to dumbfound them by starting a sentence: “You know – there is an interesting fact about the _______”. Suddenly I wasn’t alone in my “weird nerdiness” and it was actually a reasonably normal if not always common trait. There were other people who were in fact, curious.

You made it quite clear that you were passionate about what you talked about and you believed, genuinely believed, that it was part of your duty – perhaps even social responsibility – to teach and inform others. When I see you on screen I feel like I am watching a five year old boy with a Joker like grin – someone lucky enough to do something important that he also enjoys greatly enough to seem playful. I work as a science writer now and I see the same passion and Joker grin on the faces of the scientists and researchers that I interview. And in the midst of the debate over whether the public should be educated more in order to understand the science or the scientists be taught to talk to the media and the public better, you continue to do exactly what often has been forgotten and needs to be done in the first place – the journalist’s job of explaining the science to the audience at whatever level they are at and in a way that effects a result.

I live in Perth in Western Australia, close to a place that has the zircon crystals that take us back as far as we can so far go to the beginnings of this planet. There are lots of people here who would love to see you visit us again. There are lots of people who would love to listen to what you say and learn.

Sir David, I cannot say that I am a fan per se as I am not fanatical about you (quibble, quibble) but my gratitude for what you have done to inspire and impact on others is, well, not something easy to define the outer edges of. I am just glad that in your own way, you are alive and fighting off the dragons of ignorance in the oceans on the ever expanding map of knowledge.

So thank you for being alive.

Much Love,
Marisa Wikramanayake

A new portfolio

Marisa — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 16:12:31 +0000

I now have a PDF version of my portfolio. Click on the link to download it and feel free to pass it around to anyone who may want to see it.

Cheers, Marisa

5 mistakes you might make while freelancing

Marisa — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 19:23:59 +0000

If you’re starting out, feel free to use this list as a list of WHAT NOT TO DO. Some of these I have made and rectified, others are the ones I consistently see other people making that make me want to tear my hair out.

Rushing in madly.Freelancing is hard. It’s tough. While you may decide to jump into it part time or full time at the start, it definitely pays to sit down and think everything through from the systems for organisation you will create, to your business model, your marketing and who is your target market and what you need for the business. Skip this step and you will flounder for a lot longer than necessary and decimate valuable resources. Do this step properly and it will become a springboard.

Playmobil Pocketmod by orangeacid via Flickr

Not checking the legal requirements.
What do you need to operate the business you want to where you want to? Do you need council approval? Planning approval? Do you need certification from a particular organisation? Do you need a certain set of qualifications? Have you got the right tax related and business related numbers and do you know what kind of business you operate and whether you need to register a business name or charge GST? Do you have the right insurance cover and equipment?

Show me the money by Piez via Flickr
No plan for rates or how much you charge.
How much you charge should take into account your desired annual income, the hours you will actually work apart from hours for admin and so on, tax, superannuation, savings and what your expenses will be as well as what your union and professional societies dictate your minimum and maximum rates should be. For an easy means of calculating, check out this article. Of course you have to remember to add extra in for the cat’s expenses as well.
Blindly following a set path.
Sure, you can do a Google search and find this site or any other site that offers advice on how to go about setting up a business and how to freelance and yes, that is part of this site’s purpose. However, you have to remember, you are you not the person who set up the website. You’re not me for example and while you can rush off to calculate rates and get your ABN, I would not recommend making an effort to follow in my footsteps exactly.

Why? You’re not me. You may not be interested in science journalism or policy document editing. You may not be interested in the kind of writing I do. In which case, you need to sit down and figure out what you do enjoy writing about and why and then use the advice I give you such as getting an ABN and buying a copy of the Australian Writer’s Marketplace and looking through it for who publishes what you want to write about whether it’s Arabian horse breeding (tons of publications apparently) or travel options for over 60s. In the process of my work, I edit documents to do with policy on environmental management or public service reform – stuff that is usually dry as dust and I have to make it readable. I have to go interview people on what whale sharks eat, how fast space is moving and highly complicated genetic and DNA testing related equipment. If you are not interested in this stuff, you won’t learn on the job and if you don’t learn on the job or as you go or have a prior interest or knowledge, you won’t be able to do good work.

And you need to do good work so don’t give yourself more work to do – go write about something you love and it may be hard to get but chisel that path out for yourself.

Horse Blinkers by Alex E Proimos via Flickr
Putting the marketing blinkers on.Do not do this. First, think of your market – your target audience. You want potential clients right? What do they do? Who do they work for? Where would they likely hang out online and in the real world? Now target your main marketing efforts there.A lot of people who want advice find me online. A few clients find me online. The rest tend to find me via the real world usually though my online presence helps a lot. So do not just restrict yourself to being either online or offline.

If you like this post, let me know. I may do another set of mistakes that you shouldn’t make, next Monday. I hope it helps. Print it out and paste it next to the computer if need be.

Cents & Sensibility: Networking

Marisa — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 16:49:05 +0000

Note: I have been wrangled into writing a column on freelancing business related issues for the Society of Editors (WA) Inc.’s monthly newsletter Bookworm.

There are times when I enter a room and I freeze. I know why I am there, I know I am supposed to talk to person X, Y, and Z, but I freeze regardless. I end up sidling around the room, propping up all the walls as I go.

It’s probably because I prefer to be far more indirect and casual. A formal networking session where people look at you expecting a wonderful elevator pitch as soon as you approach them tends to unnerve me. I assume that this puts other people off networking as well.

I personally don’t like it at all when someone darts up to me, quizzes me on what I do, doesn’t wait for me to answer before delivering their pitch and then gives me a business card and darts off elsewhere. That leaves me feeling like the social interaction hasn’t quite finished and holding a card for a service I will never need.

Business card house by rahims vic Flickr (See? That is all that they are good for if there is no meaningful interaction to go with them)

The point of clients and customers is that you want them to become repeat clients and customers. That means they need to trust you enough to start working with you, and then trust your work and you enough to come back. That’s a lot of trust and that doesn’t come unless you build up a relationship with the people you work with. Guerilla style working the room just doesn’t cut it.

I suppose people who work the room want quick results as building relationships takes time. However, I think it is key to keeping your business going. I have my business cards with me all the time but they are the last thing I pull out in an interaction with someone, I am more interested in the people I meet, what they do and what their passion is.

This is what you want to happen: save the elevator pitch for the few moments you do need them and get to know the person you are talking to. You want them to be excited by what you do so that then they tell someone else and suddenly you have word of mouth marketing.

Excitement by SkippyJon via Flickr

You might not be a people person at all, but there needs to be a bit of a give and take. I always smile and ask people questions about what they do, and when they ask me in return, I tell them. I am so used to this now that when someone who has followed me online meets me and actually starts off by asking me how ‘project A’ is going, I get a bit stumped and shy.

The other tip is to not get intimidated by the sheer number of people in a room. Take your time, hang around the edges and then go talk to the other person standing by themselves first.

Networking happens anywhere and everywhere. I am just as interested in an editor who works at say, Lonely Planet or New Scientist, as I am in the guy who runs the newsagent on the corner of my street. In fact, I am probably more interested in my newsagent because he remembers my name, makes me laugh and exchanges gossip with me. I don’t think you can peer into the future and pick and choose people based on whether a relationship with them will get you anywhere – you don’t know enough about a person to judge that accurately simply from what they do.

Kiss by Piez via Flickr

That being said, take all the opportunities you can. Always keep your business cards on you. People make life worthwhile so get to know them and let them get to know you.

Cheers, Marisa

My piece for the Emergen Ebook for National Volunteer Week 2011

Marisa — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 10:22:43 +0000

From time to time, I scribble something out really quickly for a blogging challenge called Blogging for a Cause on Emergen.

Then, Janine Ripper, tends to collate everything into an Ebook. Like the one below, a collection of blog posts written for National Volunteer Week 2011, where I am on page 37 and 38.

Enjoy:

Open publication - Free publishing - More blogging

Heroes, idols, who do I admire?

Marisa — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 16:02:54 +0000

Note: Post originally written for a series about inspiration on Emergen.

You might think I am very hard to please. Maybe that’s true. I don’t know.

What I do know is you could toss names like “Gandhi”, “Mother Theresa” and so on at me and it wouldn’t matter one bit to me. They are all great people and have done wonderful work but…
…they don’t inspire me.

It’s not one person or several people who inspire me.

See, I am an editor, I must therefore be true to my profession and read books, own cats and most of all quibble incessantly.

New Spot via Flickr

I believe in the capacity and capability of people to do and be so much more than they often imagine themselves to be. If someone tells me that they want to do something, I can often see exactly how they would go about it if they wanted to.

Swing via Flickr

However, people being people, they often instead using their fear as a stepping stone, get dragged back down into it and never live up to what they want to be or make an effort to reach out and be what they want to be.

So for me, what I am most inspired by is that moment when while talking with someone, I see them make the decision, take the step, whatever it may entail to move to where they want to be or have dreamed of being.

I see the huge Joker-like grin on their faces, I see their eyes start to shine, I hear their voices get louder and faster till, if you focus solely on them and nothing else for a moment, you seem to get lost in a wacky kaleidoscope of sounds and sights.

: it’s in his smile by Nisha A via Flickr

That’s passion. That inspires me. Because I love nothing more than seeing people try. I write and edit because I want to give people a means of communicating what they are passionate about but also because I want to tell people things that will shake them up enough to try.

I don’t like apathy – or at least I like it (it has its uses) but not when it gets in the way – much the same way I feel about fear.

So I can’t point you to one person or even say to a family member or something like that.

I can show you this world and its resources, quirky, unfair distribution of said resources and all. I can show you the 7 billion people on the planet. I can show you the sheer huge amount of time you have in a lifetime that you can direct towards using to make an impact.

Untitled by Joseph Gray via Flickr

I can show you the truth of the fact that nothing about anything else will matter till you decide it does. Till you make a choice to do something you want to do, the way you want to do it, how you think you should and for a reason you believe in.

At that point, in that moment, I would find what you are experiencing to be inspiring. And only in that moment – that’s just how I work, no offense. I might admire you as a person but you wouldn’t be a source of inspiration to motivate me to do anything.

The point is I don’t matter. Because in that moment, you could become the person – the next Gandhi, Theresa, Shakespeare, Woolf, what have you – that inspires a new generation. And you, to them, will matter. And yes, that is important.

Far more than you will ever imagine.

Stop reading. Go live.

Go inspire someone else already.

Desert Leader via Flickr

Not all editors are boring…

Marisa — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 13:28:27 +0000

It’s not that I intend to be very political. But I guess I do care and that’s the point.

I seem to keep coming up against instances where I am faced with very narrow mindsets and/or stereotypes. And it annoys me. And then I have to do something about it.

Or sometimes someone gets shocked by what I do for a living or some part of my lifestyle or some part of me – something that’s always been inherently, well, normal for me and I realise I have been passively doing something about it.

Then I get tagged in some people’s minds as a rebel or in some cases, “a very special/adventurous/brave person”. Something along those lines.

Now I understand the reasons for why people have these misconceptions in the first place and in fact I understand the science behind it. But that’s another a story for another time.

There was the time when I met two very well to do Australians (I can hardly even remember how or where I met them) and they complimented me on my English and told me I was “very articulate”. They were very lovely people and they meant well and it was heartbreaking to joke back and say “Thank you, it’s my first/native language.”

Then I had to explain, yes I was born elsewhere but I spoke English first – it just happened that way.

Or the South Asian woman who was amazed that I was being allowed to live by myself in a foreign city or that I have travelled all over the world alone.

Or the people from back home who still sometimes cannot fathom why my family hasn’t set me up in a “proper job”.

I still think that perhaps some people see my name and wonder why the hell I am working as an editor/journalist because presumably I wouldn’t be very good with the language. I know that one of my examiners on my Honours thesis definitely thought so.

Then there are other things like “all journalists drink like fishes” – I don’t. “All editors are white haired women over 50″ – I and quite a few others are not. “Editors are very boring people who argue over grammar and spelling.” Well, we are picky and you don’t want a discussion to start over whether it’s “Shan’t” or “Sha’n't” but we are exciting too. I know one editor who used to be a ballet dancer, another who’s travelled the world, another who’s trained as an archaeologist. Now I have danced, travelled AND worked on an archaeological dig.

So here’s my proof:

I once had a dance routine that involved me hanging upside down inside a ladder. Ever since then I can't walk past one without the urge to twist myself around it. This was one of two shots taken for the centrefold for Issue 2 of the ECU magazine GSM in 2010. I was Books and Games Editor then.

This the first Archaeology class at the University of Notre Dame in 2007 on the very first day of the Peel Town Dig. I should be easy to pick out in black and jeans crouching down just behind the trench wall.

And as far as travel goes: Sri Lanka 1983 – 2001 (with excursions to almost every corner of the globe); US 2001 – 2003; Sri Lanka 2003 – 2004; and Australia 2004 – present (with side trips to Malaysia, Singapore & Fiji). To see some more pictures go to Light Refracted.

Editors aren’t boring. We live wonderful varied lives so we find it easy to tell when your characters haven’t. I hope this post has gone some way to enlightening you on how wonderfully varied and eclectic people can be.

I don’t care if I am an editor, journalist or writer. I don’t care what title I have. I pretty much care about the kind of life I have and the people I get to share it with. Everything else is secondary. Almost everything I have done that seems exciting to others (I played drums in an indie rock band for example) just developed naturally from a point where generally I was presented with an opportunity to try something new out and I just nodded and said “Yes”.

I can only be myself and I am so glad I am who I am because if I was someone else I probably would just be bored stiff with my own company.

Cheers, Marisa