Ten Lessons for Technical Writers - Part 1 of 3

I am a freelance technical writer. I definitely got into this from the "technical" end of things, since I have a degree in math and a PhD in physics. Not that I use these skills much on writing assignments. But it can come in handy when I can say to a client, "Don't be afraid to use the big words, I have a PhD in physics." This leads to Lesson 1 I learned: Use whatever you have. Maybe you don't have a PhD in physics, but you might have been a salesperson, or planned and planted gardens, or whatever: find a way to use your strengths and skills to sell your expertise to clients.

There were three main events that got me into technical writing. My original job out of college was as a programmer for IBM. Good job, excellent pay and benefits, but it was the same thing over and over: writing code, testing, fixing bugs; writing code, testing, fixing bugs. I realized that I needed something with more variety. That's my Lesson 2: Understand your own personality and what will make you most content.

I started teaching in college, which had variety, but not much pay. I had an idea about how to add to my income: a book of computer trivia. I wrote up this book, just questions and answers, and sent it around to dozens of computer book publishers. Nobody wanted it. However, one company realized that here was a guy who knew computers and could write complete sentences. They asked me if I would do a rewrite of one of their books for the new version of the software. Notice that I had nothing published at this point, no track record, no experience, but they offered me an assignment anyway, based on that computer trivia book manuscript I sent them. That was my Lesson 3: You don't necessarily need real credentials to qualify for a position, just something to bait the hook.

This was the first main event on the path to technical writing. I wrote that book – and a bunch more besides – for that publisher and several others. I didn't earn a lot of money for this – $2000 - $3000 per book – but I did get 7 published books out of the experience. I still wasn't thinking in terms of a career as a technical writer, but I now had some real credentials. This was Lesson 4 for me: Each completed assignment is a stepping-stone to the next assignment.