TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Subject:Re: how I didn't really want to be a tech writer From:Martha J Davidson <editrix -at- SLIP -dot- NET> Date:Wed, 12 Aug 1998 14:40:01 -0700
OK, with that subject line, I guess it's my turn to chime in... (it gets
pretty long...)
I never really wanted to be a tech writer; I didn't even believe I could
write at all, and I certainly didn't like it.
What I did (and still do) like was shapes, structures, systems, details,
and things that fit together in a way that I seem to be able to see clearly
when other people just sit around baffled... I also love languages, and
words and language in general.
Like many other posters, I had some phenomenal English teachers in high
school, who taught me the rudiments of English grammar and the structure
and history of the language. As I studied French, and later German,
Hebrew, and a number of other Semitic languages, I saw more and more of the
underlying structure of languages and how words fit together in extremely
beautiful and sometimes immensely complex patterns.
During high school I also delved deeply into my math courses, absorbing
algebra, geometry, logic, trigonometry, and calculus as fast as I could.
Again, I loved the shapes, structures, and patterns I was seeing. When I
went to college, I became a math major, focusing also on logic and
languages (primarily French and German). In my freshman year I took my
first (and only) computer course: numerical analysis using FORTRAN, on an
IBM 1130 with punch cards. Yes, that was a long time ago.
Something happened during that course that shaped my world view and has
influenced my career ever since. I was having a hard time making heads or
tails of what I was doing in that class, and I couldn't get any of the
geeks in the computer center to answer any questions for me, beyond a
cryptic monosyllable or two.
I was so frustrated that I swore never to touch a computer again. Clearly,
that didn't stick, but a subtle level of technophobia did. Which I believe
makes me even more qualified to do what I do today: document complex
software objects and processes to people with a reasonable level of
intelligence who just don't know this information yet. I can explain
things in non-jargon terms to people I know will be able to understand, and
I can identify the hidden assumptions and clarify "that one thing" that
will make it all make sense.
After I graduated from college, I didn't know what to do with myself to
make money. My roommate, another veteran of that same computer center who
had made her way through without my confusion and technophobia, found her
first job as a technical writer. I had little idea what that meant and no
idea of what the job was about.
Not long after that I found a job in the Boston Globe that said, "if you
have a liberal arts degree and aren't afraid to learn about computers, let
us teach you." Well, OK, I fudged about not being afraid, but I got the
job, and became a software engineer at a company that made front-end
systems for phototypesetters. As I worked with hyphenation algorithms for
English, French, German, and Spanish, I learned everything I could about
typography. Along the way, I became friends with the writers there and
offered to read preliminary versions of the documentation, which I always
marked up as I read it, with grammatical corrections, and questions in the
margin about sections that were unclear.
A few years later I moved to San Francisco, where I found another software
engineering job, again with a company that made software that worked with
words and language. That time I worked with the spelling checker module of
the ill-fated word processor SuperWriter, on CP/M machines. My first
assignment was to learn the software by reviewing the draft User's Guide.
As I read, I marked up places where the text didn't match what I saw on the
screen and where things didn't work quite the way the manual said they
would. And I still had no interest in being a writer, and had little idea
what tech writers actually did.
At my next job, there were no tech writers. After a while they hired a
contract writer, whose expertise seemed to be in marketing literature. I
was assigned to work with him, and in a meeting I asked him what his vision
was for the manual we were working on. When he had no answer, I thought
about the question, then stood up at the white board, and said,
"Well, it seems to me that after an introduction, we should have a hardware
overview, then a software overview, and then maybe a quick tutorial showing
how to so some basic things to make this XYZ work; what do you think?" And
my boss agreed, and told me to make it happen. Because I didn't believe I
could write, I arranged to have other people create first drafts of each
section, and took on the tutorial chapter myself. As each section was
ready, I consolidated it and edited it, passing it on to the contract
writer for final formatting. Thus, a tech writing career was created.
After that, I found one more job as a software engineer, again with a
company that had no writers. Again, I went through the existing
documentation, which was in the form of a system definition overview that
would eventually become a user's manual. I suggested some significant
changes, and worked extensively with the writing style, making it clear,
direct, and above all, consistent. Somewhere in this process, it finally
became clear that this was my calling. We hired a tech writing intern, and
she taught me as much as I taught her. Because of my background with
typography, I took to desktop publishing software easily, and she learned
to edit her work with as much attention to detail as I had.
From there, it was easier. A bit over ten years ago, I took my first
"official" tech writing job, after about six years as a software engineer,
and I haven't looked back. I detoured for a while into tech pubs
management, as a working manager, and am now "just" a writer. I like
designing and editing much more than I like writing, and I satisfy that
hunger by offering to do peer edits for colleagues whenever they are
interested. I also offer myself as a mentor to newer writers, which I
enjoy very much. Along the way, I have worked with a number of wonderful
tech writers, and I've learned something from each one of them.
Though I have little formal training in technical communication, and hardly
consider myself a natural writer, I do have a knack for seeing structure,
both of software systems and of documentation, and an innate aptitude to
coordinate numerous levels of detail. I guess there are all sorts of paths
to get where we are today...
