i don't find it boring, just not as satisfying as doing the work i'm writing about.
Interesting. I mean.... I get great intellectual satisfaction from doing the work I write about. One of the better parts of my job is that it allows me to Think Deep Thoughts . However, I actually get a much more visceral satisfaction from taking my brilliant ideas, admittedly very jumbled in my head most of the time, and transforming them into these clear, concise papers. Like cutting and polishing a gemstone. (Ahem. I didn't mean that to sound quite so arrogant.... cutting and polishing a rhinestone? :)
What kind of work do you write about? Do you share your Deep Thoughts with the world, or are you presenting data collected and analyzed? I wonder if the type of work presented has as much to do with this as one's temperment.
i don't write deep thoughts, i write protocol proposals and data summaries and slides for presentations (which fortunately i do NOT have to give myself).
so even though it's really nice to see all the hard work i did summarized neatly as cool results, and describe how i did it so other people can learn how, the actual bio lab benchwork is much more interesting to me.
but that's a very different type of technical writing than Deep Thoughts or writing manuals for software or writing training documents for software...
I have, in the past, used their ability to be put to paper as a measure of the clarity of my thoughts. Or as a way of forcing them to become clear. I claim to enjoy what tech writing I've done, but looking at how I choose to spend my time at work when "documenting" is one of my schedulable tasks, I seem to like other things more. :)
It seems to me that documenting things that *other* people have done might be different from documenting your own work, where you might be making some of it up as you go along and have the clear authority to do so. Both easier and harder, I guess. Easier because you're creating less of the subject matter yourself: if a policy question comes up you can ask someone about it rather than having to decide on a good answer. Harder because you have to pull the material out of other people's heads instead of your own.
And it might be different as a job in itself than as an aspect of a job... hm.
I've been a tech writer for around ten years now, so i will hold forth :)
Tech writing is good work. You take a piece of something (software in my case), and you explain it so other people can use it. You learn how to communicate very concisely. You have a visible product in your hands at the end of a project, that you can point to and say: hey, that's cool! Esp. if you're in software tech writing, you get to work with relatively smart people in a casual environment, and (often) you do not have the same bone-crushing 12-14 hour days that seem to haunt many programmers.
Tech writing is (also) grunt work. It is going over the same manual for the 14th time, paying attention to every little nit-picking detail of formatting and style, so that your work will look professional at the end. It is being under-valued by managers, sneered at by developers, and misunderstood at all levels. It is having to explain over and over, that no, you don't have time to copy someone else's report, and yes, you do need to be involved during the design stage, and yes, the QA folk need to listen to you, and well, if Joe Q. Developer doesn't review this document then HE can explain to the irate customer why you need to sacrifice a chicken on the full moon to get this particular function to work.
It's a mix, like most jobs. BUT, if you have an eye for detail and a desire to communicate what you know by writing it down on paper (or electrons, for the higher-tech among you), it can be an extremely rewarding and lucrative career.
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Date: 2002-10-09 09:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-10-09 09:35 am (UTC)whereas i could say exactly the same thing, and mean exactly the opposite.
i don't find it boring, just not as satisfying as doing the work i'm writing about.
i guess it depends on your temperament.c
no subject
Date: 2002-10-09 01:37 pm (UTC)Interesting. I mean.... I get great intellectual satisfaction from doing the work I write about. One of the better parts of my job is that it allows me to Think Deep Thoughts . However, I actually get a much more visceral satisfaction from taking my brilliant ideas, admittedly very jumbled in my head most of the time, and transforming them into these clear, concise papers. Like cutting and polishing a gemstone. (Ahem. I didn't mean that to sound quite so arrogant.... cutting and polishing a rhinestone? :)
What kind of work do you write about? Do you share your Deep Thoughts with the world, or are you presenting data collected and analyzed? I wonder if the type of work presented has as much to do with this as one's temperment.
no subject
Date: 2002-10-09 07:24 pm (UTC)so even though it's really nice to see all the hard work i did summarized neatly as cool results, and describe how i did it so other people can learn how, the actual bio lab benchwork is much more interesting to me.
but that's a very different type of technical writing than Deep Thoughts or writing manuals for software or writing training documents for software...
no subject
Date: 2002-10-09 03:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-10-09 03:34 pm (UTC)It seems to me that documenting things that *other* people have done might be different from documenting your own work, where you might be making some of it up as you go along and have the clear authority to do so. Both easier and harder, I guess. Easier because you're creating less of the subject matter yourself: if a policy question comes up you can ask someone about it rather than having to decide on a good answer. Harder because you have to pull the material out of other people's heads instead of your own.
And it might be different as a job in itself than as an aspect of a job... hm.
no subject
Date: 2002-10-09 04:30 pm (UTC)Tech writing is good work. You take a piece of something (software in my case), and you explain it so other people can use it. You learn how to communicate very concisely. You have a visible product in your hands at the end of a project, that you can point to and say: hey, that's cool! Esp. if you're in software tech writing, you get to work with relatively smart people in a casual environment, and (often) you do not have the same bone-crushing 12-14 hour days that seem to haunt many programmers.
Tech writing is (also) grunt work. It is going over the same manual for the 14th time, paying attention to every little nit-picking detail of formatting and style, so that your work will look professional at the end. It is being under-valued by managers, sneered at by developers, and misunderstood at all levels. It is having to explain over and over, that no, you don't have time to copy someone else's report, and yes, you do need to be involved during the design stage, and yes, the QA folk need to listen to you, and well, if Joe Q. Developer doesn't review this document then HE can explain to the irate customer why you need to sacrifice a chicken on the full moon to get this particular function to work.
It's a mix, like most jobs. BUT, if you have an eye for detail and a desire to communicate what you know by writing it down on paper (or electrons, for the higher-tech among you), it can be an extremely rewarding and lucrative career.
no subject
Date: 2002-10-09 08:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-10-10 11:07 am (UTC)