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.
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|Is there anyone who WAS writing and selling creatively, who moved into
|technical writing as a new challenge and to earn a sustainable
|wage from
|their writing skills (poets don't earn money - just kudos and
|bacchanalian
|charm....).
|
|And if you are out there - what is your take on the field of technical
|writing - and what it means to be a technical writer?
|
|regards and thanks,
|Sean
|
|
|
Well, I've worked with one in the past(previous employer) and while she was
a very nice person, she wasn't a very good tech writer. I suspect the
agency that placed her didn't know/care about the difference between
'romance' and 'technical'. Her work suffered from many things, the two
major problems being excessively descriptive text - beautiful, exquisite and
delightful are not terms I've often(ever?) used in a user manual,, and her
inability to comprehend the basics of Word - templates, styles, numbering,
lists, spell-checking etc. I suspect she had just joined the empty-nest
brigade and was trying to re-enter the workforce.
We outsourced the user manual to 'super-big global mega-corp' because I was
too busy. The 'super-big global mega-corp' hired a consultant to write the
user manual. The consultant (unpublished romance writer) wrote the manual
with a great deal of technical assistance from me. My boss reviewed it and
asked me if it could be cleaned up. I reviewed it and threw it out. I
re-wrote it from scratch. I was/am still polite to her - aren't you proud
of me :-).
Geoff
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