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Welcome to Technical Writing

© John L. Hoh, Jr.

Another major stress factor is all the different people you are dealing with on a project and getting your information from during interviews. I have a programming background, so it's very easy for me to interview programmers and system engineers to get the information I need to document an application. Most technical writers don't have that background and programmers are notorious for being difficult to extract usable information. On the other spectrum, is having to interview non-technical people who try to explain how a system is supposed to work, or try to influence their ideas into the documentation. You have to be very tactful in all accounts.

The best reward I know of that makes Technical Writing the perfect career for me is what does it for me is when I've written a user manual, it's gone out to the customer, and I get calls saying that the manual was useful. It's very rare to ever hear that what you did was useful to someone, mostly because a computer manual is a computer manual. Most users don't ever read it anyway.

You need to have a very thick skin to be a technical writer. Every person who edits your work thinks they know how to write and are determined to be critical. Get used to it. Don't take it personally. George Orwell said it the best, "Man's greatest drive is not love or hate, but to change another person's writing."

I hope that you'll come back and visit this column often. I will strive to provide you with helpful tips and and advise regarding technical writing, the documentation industry, and writing in general.

If you would like, you can visit the website below to see my complete interview.

http://www.jobprofiles.com/bustechwriter...

The link below will take you to my company's website.

http://www.taylor-d.com

Take care,

Vicki M. Taylor