MOON GODDESS said:
I've have also been considering doing some technical writing for extra money and possibly a new career. I hope to take an online course and will contact some professional societies to get their input, but was wondering if anyone who has done this type of work can tell us what the real, day-to-day work is like. Do you really need to be a "techie," or will good writing skills suffice? Thanks for any information.
Forget the "online course" unless it's given by a university. Go to the library and check out a lot of books on technical writing and study the style. Get books on how to edit too. Most of technical writing is really editing and consolidating existing information ... I do very little "original" writing and lots of reworking things from product specs written by engineers and marketing, or the manufacturers of other products.
The Society for Technical Communication is
the professional organizaiton for technical writers ... visit the site at
www.stc.org and see where the local chapter is. Nice folk, like to see
fresh meat eager newcomers.
How techie you have to be depends on what you are writing about ... and "technical writing" is loosely defined as any non-fiction that isn't marketing and advertising: user manuals, procedures for getting things done in an office, public info pamphlets, training material, etc.
I don't do financial tech writing, because I know nothing about the industry terms and don't want to learn them. You'd choke at some of the things I write about unless you had programming, networking and electronics training. On the other hand, I have a friend who writes proposals for grant funding that would drive me batty in a day or two.
The day-to-day work varies depending on what you are writing about ... one of my favorites had me in levis, t-shirt and tennies crawling all over fire trucks
on another job I started work by putting on a bunny suit and heading for the clean room. On another I suited up and headed for a major law office. Sometimes I head for the computer in my fuzzy pink robe and telecommute.
The ability to learn enough about the technology to document it adequately quickly is critical. Being able to "think like a user", whether that user is Joe Sixpack or a senior networking engineer is important.
