More on drafts --

[Steven Oppenheimer <writer -at- writemaster -dot- com>]

"Either it's a finished document, or it's a solid draft, or it's an 
outline, or it's not technical writing. "
from Bill Swallow, below...

Man oh man, do I respectfully but strongly disagree with Mr. 
Swallow.  Actually, I'm at the point of getting out of technical writing, 
and getting into marketing writing, in part because of too many managers 
with that point of view.  I think the view expressed above stifles 
creativity, and prevents good writers from doing their best work.

Here's the scoop:  Some people work from the top down, researching, doing 
an outline, then filling in detailed information.  But many very talented 
technical writers -- and I know, because I am one of them -- work from the 
bottom up.  I gather information, start writing, cobbling together a 
document in bits and pieces, rearranging and reorganizing as I gather more 
information.  For me, for the way I write, a document grows organically as 
the needs of both the technology and user become more and more apparent the 
longer I develope the document.  The INTERMEDIATE result is a document 
whose early appearances are rough and sloppy, with big gaping holes, but it 
grows in the END into something complete, ordered, elegant, structured, and 
eminently accessible.  One of the wonderful things about the modern 
word-processing technology (and online help technology) is that it 
facilitates this kind of organic development of a document, because cut and 
paste make it so easy to move things around.

I'm not knocking the first way of doing things, apparently it works well 
for some people.  But when managers grab a rough cut of a document off my 
desk before I tell them it's ready to be looked at -- well, if they're not 
happy, it's their own damn fault and not mine.  My clients who are patient 
enough to wait until I say I have something to show them have invariably 
been pleased.

I think the important thing to remember is that, unlike computer code, 
which is ultimately meant to be consumed by a machine -- and therefore can 
be engineered -- technical documentation is still meant to be consumed by 
humans.  Creating effective technical documentation is not a technical 
discipline, it's an empathic art of stepping into the users 
shoes.  Effective communication, including technical communication, 
requires artistry, not methodology.  (Well, okay, maybe there is some room 
for method and technique;  but I fully mean it when I say that technique 
without intuition is absolutely useless, while intuition without formal 
technique can still carry you very, very far.)  It's the failure of the 
technical writing community-at-large to appreciate this which is, once 
again, leading me to leave tech writing for other domains with more 
breathing room.

That said, I remain available for technical documenation work for now (till 
I'm more established in marketing), and FYI I not only write very well, I 
have an excellent grasp of technology itself (e.g., I can program in 
several languages, have studied physics, etc.).  Resume is available at the 
web site indicated below, and yes, I am looking for freelance work.

Sincerely,
Steve Oppenheimer
writer -at- SPAMPROTECTwritemaster -dot- com
www.writemaster.com

P.S.  One footnote.  Writing the way I do doesn't work well with 
single-sourcing.  But then, that's another grievance I have with the recent 
development of tech writing, that two different kinds of documents (online 
and printed) with wholly different structural and content requirements, are 
supposed to be developed from the same source text, just to save 
money.  Grrrrr.....