Re: Got Process?

Subject: Re: Got Process?
From: Bruce Byfield <bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2002 10:03:57 -0800

Andrew Plato wrote:

There is a lot more to technical writing then a documentation process. My
complaint is on the intense amount of focus and energy that documentation
processes are given. If I was a new writer entering this field and I
actually believed all the rhetoric coming out of STC, I would rapidly mire
myself into complete incompetence. There is such an obsession among some
writers with organizing their world.

You're right about this obsession, and its effect. I consider it one of the most crippling aspects of technical writing today. I also suspect that it's an important reason why technical writers don't get the respect that they crave. There's a stink of desperation about it, which others pick up in the same way that interviewers can detect someone who is desperate about being hired.

I suspect that this obsession has a number of sources:

- Lack of imagination - Many people are intelligent, but very few are both intelligent and imaginative. Many writers literally can't imagine striking out on their own. Others, having found a way that they can work, can't imagine that the same process doesn't work in other situations or for other people.

- Lack of experience - Some writers have learned a process at their first job. The process may or may not actually have been necessary because of the size of the job. When they move on to another job, these writers don't stop to consider whether the methods they learned are suitable for their new job. Following the procedure becomes part of writing for them because they don't know any better.

- Insecurity - Other writers are afraid to venture out from what they know. Having learned one way that works, they cling to it. They remind me of the composition student I once had who, told that the high school model of a 5 X 5 essay (an essay that consists of five paragraphs with five sentences each) was inappropriate for university burst into tears of confusion. The student literally could not understand that there was any alternative to writing an essay. Even after I patiently showed, step by step, how an essay could be developed along another pattern that was actually based on the material, the student was incapable of comprehending that what I was demonstrating was even possible. That was an extreme case, but some writers seem equally insecure.

- Laziness - To a certain extent, following a structured process tempts people to turn their brains off. That's not inevitable, and it's definitely not advisable, but the temptation is always there, even with a workable process. It is far easier to fall back on an existing methodology than to observe the subject matter and develop an outline based on observation, or than testing the template against the subject matter.
- Ego - Many writers feel they don't get enough respect from non-writers. To compensate, they develop arcane jargon and work methods. These tactics help to reassure them that they are specialists who possess knowledge that other people don't have. If they can then persuade newer writers that they alone possess the secrets of this knowledge, then they can be respected by non-writers and writers alike. This motivation may have something to do with the influx of Arts-types like me into the profession - the tactics are very common in the soft sciences such as psychology and sociology, and for much the same reason.


--
Bruce Byfield 604.421.7177 bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com

"It is our will That thus enchains us to permitted ill.
We might be otherwise, we might be all
We dream of happy, high, majestical."
- Percy Shelley, "Julian and Maddalo"







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RE: Got Process?: From: Andrew Plato

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