Travails of a tech writer

Lot of people ask me what I do for a living. When I say 'Tech writer.' they go, 'What's that?'. And I explain,

'What do you do when you are stuck with MS-Word or Excel?'

'Call the guy that sold me the computer?'

And I'd hide my exasperation and pain,

'No, I mean, it is 2 a.m. and you can't call anyone.'

'What's the big deal? I'll call the next morning, but hey,you haven't told me what you do as a tech writer man.'

And I'd resign saying, 'I write help. Like when you hit F1 on MS-Word, you know?' And my audience would groan, 'ohhhh! Never read that stuff.' A pause. And, 'Is that it?'

There. Do you see my misery?

My audience includes lay people, software engineers, undertakers, tea-tasters, musicians, and my dad. Phew. All you guys, read this:

God I hate writing help files. I'll never be able to be a technical writer. How do those people do it? There are actually technical writing sites that are devoted to the love of the profession. I seriously admire these people. It takes nothing but love and hard work to be good at this (much like C++..?). And all I'm trying to do is make a simple help file on The Regulator. Geez. You'd think I'd have done it by now, 4 days after starting, but no. I only have like one page and a basket full of chocolate wrappings(kidding... we're trying to have the least amount of chocolate available in the house, specifically for situations such as this). So. any suggestions? anyone else wants to help me write this thing? I promise a serious credit in the about :)



To be honest, I've never had to do this before. Sure, I've written many technical documents, but documents that say “click this then you'lll see this so click that to get this” are simply ....ugh!

(via rosherove)






Write to me: Suman[at]techwritersindia[dot]com