Most of us have transitioned into technical writing from a non writing career or from a different writing career. Obviously we try to gauge ourselves as a technical writer based on our English writing skills adhering to the different styles of technical writing. In the course of time we try to compete with our colleagues on better writing skills and try to position ourselves in the team and look for progression in the career.
This holds true if we are treated as a technical writer as an individual contributor. This also requires us to know all the other aspects of technical writing other than writing alone, such as authoring tool proficiency, skills to interact with the subject matter experts, and little bit of knowledge of estimation of the work and planning and meeting delivery schedule. However, having all in a person is quite a challenge at a time.
Technical writers’ jobs do not always require writing only. There are different kinds of documentation need and a technical writer’s work is driven by the requirement. For example, if a document is required to be re-branded, you hardly need to do any writing job. Similarly, if a document is to be updated for the revisions, you just need to write a few sentences or a few paragraphs to add into the documents. If the document is to be created into a different format your job is to use same content into the new format.
You are lucky, if you are associated with writing a new document wherein you can show your writing skills to your fullest capacity. Yet again, the document goes through several reviews for technical accuracies and language hygiene. This is done by other technical experts and fellow technical writer as a reviewer.
Although, the great job of writing of the document is done by a technical writer alone, but is it right to take entire credit for writing the document. For completeness of the document, others too contribute immensely.
Whereas, in a team setup, the competence and skills of all the team members are recognized based on one superior skill and team largely depend on that individual to fulfill that need. May be that person might not be a good writer, but he/she can be a good authoring tool specialist, a good trouble shooter, a good leader, a good technical person or a good graphic designer or a good communicator. Therefore, even for one deliverable, the efforts of all the individuals accounted equally.
Once, one of my colleagues said, “We are paid for our efforts.” As an immediate thought I realized that being a technical writer he is passing the buck and trying to cover for his incompetence in writing. Later, it haunted me loudly and reality seems to be true. The best of the work is achieved by team work and it consists of every team member’s best efforts.
May be, my freelancer friends would have different opinion on this but as a part of the team and working in a corporate setup, this is the reality.
