“How can I become a successful TECHNICAL WRITER?”

June 15th, 2008 | Posted in blog 7 Comments »

K. writes,

Dear Mr. Tom Johnson,

I am a Post Graduate in English. Recently I am working in a leading public house as writer. How can I become a successful TECHNICAL WRITER?

Please reply me as soon as possible.

K.

Dear K,

The best thing you can do to develop your skills and ability with technical writing is to actually do some technical writing. Find an open source project, such as WordPress.org or Pligg, and write some documentation for it. Most open source projects have poor documentation, so they provide excellent opportunities.

When you finish your user guide or online help, ask someone on a technical writing listserv (like TECHWR-L) to review it. Someone will probably give you excellent feedback. Make a few updates, polish it up, and use it as the technical writing sample in your portfolio. Nothing gets you more familiar with technical writing than actually doing technical writing.

Tom

Sponsors

Tags: Answering Questions, breaking in, India, pligg, portfolio, Technical Writing, WordPress

If you liked this post, keep updated with new content: Subscribe to I'd Rather Be Writing.

Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Recent Comments

Ellis Pratt: Tom you need to check your comment Spam filter – it’s letting through a lot of spam.... (20)
personal text to speech: That is very attention-grabbing, You are a very skilled blogger. I have joined your rss... (20)
Neal: What Ellis said. We’re using Mindtouch, and they don’t even advertise that they’re a... (20)
Neal: Noz: You’re only being a jerk because you’re not explaining your point! (Ok, not really a... (20)
Stefan Kleineikenscheidt: Tom, the point about wikis I wanted to make is that wikis are not the type of tools as... (20)

To write well, you should first write! says:

June 17, 2008 at 1:17 am

[...] One of the most fundamental questions for an aspiring Technical Writer is how to become a good one! And the most fundamental principle is to write … read this insightful post on Tom Johnson’s blog > here [...]

Malathi says:

June 17, 2008 at 3:13 am

I agree with you in saying that we need to write first in order to improve writing.

Can you please be more elaborate about the open source projects and how to go about it..

Thanks in Advance
Malathi

Meryl K. Evans says:

June 17, 2008 at 8:15 pm

You can find tons of open source projects by going to:

http://sourceforge.net/ (all open source software) and browsing the site until you find software you like with documentation that is non-existent or useless.

http://www.opensourcecms.com/ (open source content management software) includes WordPress and many others.

Once you find something — contact the developer. I am sure they’d delight in having the free help and be able to give users documentation.

Meryl K. Evanss last blog post..Telling the Hard Truths of the Writing Life

avi says:

June 19, 2008 at 7:19 am

I’d also write some articles for Wikipedia, and find out whether I like to explain things, simply complex explanations (written by others), etc.

Tom says:

June 20, 2008 at 12:20 am

Malitha, try writing instructions for the WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin. Upgrading WordPress is something that many people struggle with. Also, lots of people want to integrate shopping carts into their WordPress sites. Try writing instructions for that.

Or, on a totally different note, you could write instructions for using the Firefox web developer extension toolbar. Or writing instructions for using gmail. Why don’t you pick something you’re already familiar with?

Cherry says:

August 4, 2008 at 7:55 pm

They say the best way to learn something is to practice doing it.

Carrey says:

August 4, 2008 at 8:03 pm

What I did before was first outline the basic instructions on how to use this product, then explained it further.

Getting an editor may also help polish an article.

I'd Rather Be Writing