Lyn Worthen presented to the STC Intermountain chapter tonight on running your own business as a technical communications consultant. She covers almost everything you need to know as a consultant, including rates, billing, contracts, marketing, taxes, business structures, hours, salary, tools, locations, niche services, portfolios, client communications, and more.

Here’s her presentation description:

Unlike the consistent schedule, workload, and wages of a 9-5 technical writing job, going it on your own as a consultant or contractor is a lot like riding the tide. Sometimes the tide is “in” and you have plenty of work to keep you happily tapping away on your keyboard; the projects are queuing up, the money is flowing, and all’s right with the world.

Other times, the tide is “out” and you find yourself walking on a desolate beach, staring out at the horizon, waiting for your ship to come in — and, if you’re lucky, picking up the occasional small job still lurking in a hidden tidal pool; money is scarce, and as the siren song of Corporate America tempts you back into the relative stability of captured employment, you question the wisdom of continuing to go it alone.

And then there are the “tsunamis,” those times when you have more work than one person should ever be expected to handle; yet in spite of the fact that you’re barely keeping your head above water, you’re reluctant to say “no” to any of it because you don’t know how high the floodwaters will rise or how long the drought that is sure to follow will last.

About Lyn Worthen

Lyn Worthen’s company is Information Design Co: Technical Communications Consulting, based in Utah and serving local, national, and international clients. Lyn is a member of the STC, the Utah Women Tech Council (WTC), and National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO). You can find out more about her through her Linkedin page. To contact Lyn, send her an email at lynw@xmission.com.

Blog Sponsors

• Webworks ePublisher
• Scriptorium
• Help Generator help authoring software
• Southern Polytechnic: Information Design and Communication
• Simplified English
• MindTouch
• Madcap Software
• Dr.Explain
• Adobe Technical Communication Suite
• Congree

Interestingly, 56.4% of technical writers say their job is “low-stress,” which makes technical writing the fifth least stressful job in the U.S. Software developers are slightly more mellow, with 59% saying their job is low stress.

Technical writers are among the least stressed out, apparently

In 2006, CNN Money ranked technical writing as #13 best job with an average salary of  $57k and 23% job growth. The job growth has dropped 3% but the salary shot up 10k. Somehow this made tech writing fall in their best job rankings from 13 to 28.

Compare CNN Money’s salary findings of $67k a year with the 2008 STC Salary Database report, which estimated $61,620 a year (about 5k less). The salary estimates seem to be on target. However, when you look at the total jobs, the CNN Money report falls apart.

The STC Salary Database found that “U.S. businesses employed 47,460 technical writers.” In 2006, CNN Money said there were only 50,354 technical writing jobs, and they estimated 62,000 by 2014. However, the 2009 CNN Money survey reports that there are 84,000 total jobs. They define the total jobs as the “estimated number of people working in each specific job” (which seems a normal definition).

Something is screwy here. How is it that CNN Money’s estimate of technical writer jobs is 30,000 more than their 2006 estimate and the 2008 STC Salary Database?

Maybe they defined technical writing differently?

In 2006, they defined technical writing as

Write technical materials, such as equipment manuals, appendices, or operating and maintenance instructions. May assist in layout work.

In 2009, they defined technical writing as

Write technical materials, such as equipment manuals, online help documentation, operating directions and maintenance instructions.

Not much difference here except for the addition of online help.

Maybe the data is corrupt. The footnote for the data source says, “All pay data from PayScale.com.” If you go to Payscale.com, you’ll discover that to learn any information of value, you have to register for an account and walk through a semi-long wizard of questions. My guess is that people lose their password or register multiple times at Payscale.com, creating redundancies that would throw the number of technical writer jobs askew.

But if CNN Money’s total jobs numbers are off, how can they possibly calculate job growth? Don’t they correlate their numbers with 2006 data? And if the job growth is based on incorrect information, and job growth is a factor in the “best jobs,” how can they determine the best job? In fact, why isn’t the job growth calculated astronomically here? The change from 50,000 in 2006 to 80,000 in 2009 indicates a more than 50% job growth increase. Is this just a typo? CNN Money needs to address this discrepancy if their surveys are to have any credibility.

Blog Sponsors

• Webworks ePublisher
• Scriptorium
• Help Generator help authoring software
• Southern Polytechnic: Information Design and Communication
• Simplified English
• MindTouch
• Madcap Software
• Dr.Explain
• Adobe Technical Communication Suite
• Congree

Blog Sponsors

• Webworks ePublisher
• Scriptorium
• Help Generator help authoring software
• Southern Polytechnic: Information Design and Communication
• Simplified English
• MindTouch
• Madcap Software
• Dr.Explain
• Adobe Technical Communication Suite
• Congree

What steps do you take when writing a document?

Theory: In this order -– identify and define the audience to know their needs for information, develop the requirements for what it needs to cover, work out the review/approval process, plan the structure of the document, work out a coverage plan that says what to include and the level of detail to supply, arrange to have someone else proof and edit, run the doc through the approval process, apply changes from that process, archive it.

Practice: Get told what the boss wants, find out there’s not enough time to do it right, try to throw together some kind of doc development plan in your head, find an existing document that you can use as a template and start cramming stuff into it, simultaneously run around trying to drag information from subject matter experts while you try to build a finished document from scratch, the boss reads it and sends it to the customers, the customers nitpick over it like feuding little old ladies, the boss blames you and has you rewrite it.

How do time and budget limitations affect your writing?

In every imaginable way. You have to deliver on time and in budget if you’re going to have a good enough reputation to get your next job. Sometimes that means you have to leave out things you want in the documents. You have to prioritize what the reader *really* needs. And like it or not, you have to supply what the man who signs the checks wants, even if you know it’s the wrong thing.

How much time do you spend writing?

The writing is the smallest time block. More time has to be spent in fact checking, in discovering if the information you have from the SMEs is current, and in digging information out of the network support group who don’t want you to create that network diagram because they figure the less everyone else knows about the network, the safer their jobs are. The most important thing you can do is learn how to deal with people, so you can more easily get information from them. No matter how good you are at writing, you can’t do the job if everybody dislikes you and they won’t talk to you when you need to ask questions about the equipment you have to document.

How and when do you revise and edit documents?

Constantly. Which is a problem. There is almost never any support –- you almost never have an editor to back you up. Sometimes your work has to go straight to a customer without even going through your boss first, so the process of checking and proofing and editing everything has to be an ongoing process. And you should NEVER try to edit your own work. You get to a point you see things so often, they don’t register on your mind anymore. You have places in the content where you know exactly what you mean, but it won’t be clear to someone who’s not as familiar with the material as you are, and they won’t get it, but you’ve read it so many times you’ve lost the ability to see it differently. Usually, because you’re almost always working alone, revising and editing has to be a constant thing every minute, and that slows down everything else.

How did you acquire the skills you use for your job? Did you take classes or have on-the-job training, etc.?

I had one class in the tech school where I got an AA in electronics. Followed by 18 years of experience. I very seriously doubt anyone could fall into tech writing accidentally these days. The number of jobs has been seriously reduced and the competition has become a lot more fierce. Nowadays, especially for someone who doesn’t have a track record, being able to show lots of relevant training is probably terribly important in getting the first (couple of) job(s). And study tech subjects other than tech writing. Take classes in Java and database design. It will make your dealings with the subject matter experts easier because it proves you have the brains to understand what they do, and it makes it easier to understand how to get the information you need.

What steps did you take to get to the position you are in now?

I stumbled by accident into my first tech writing job in 1990 and stuck with it.

If you’re thinking in career terms, the problem is never getting the same type of job. Employers always hire because of your last two or three jobs. The problem is if you decide you’ve had enough of tech writing and want to try something else. People don’t look at your resume and wonder if your 8 years of experience as a tech writer would make you a good production manager. If you do think about doing something other than technical writing, you have to make the change early enough that you don’t become over specialized.

Everything I write from here down applies to some extent to every high-tech industry. A little less in companies that actually manufacture things, but very much so in software companies.

Here is the raw, unvarnished truth: If you want to make a life as a technical writer, you must sustain yourself by your enjoyment of writing, because you cannot get any satisfaction from your work any other way. For you there will not be the kinds of rewards that others can expect. Raises, promotions, company perks of some kind – forget them. You won’t see them. Technical writing will always pay significantly less than engineering or a type of work that is more central to the company’s business.

Technical writing is no longer considered a skilled IT field. It was, up until the tech stock crash of 2001. Now, technical writing has been commoditized. Since the tech bubble burst, companies have been doing everything they can to get leaner but still shovel out as much or even more product. The single largest expense (at least for software firms) is payroll. Payroll expenses are very much a function of time needed for product development. So, companies have been dedicatedly finding the absolute minimum number of people they can keep on hand and still be able to function. Cutting personnel costs has become one of the top 5 maxims in high-tech companies. This is why “outsourcing” and “offshoring” became industry standards.

Nowadays, tech writers are a dime a dozen. Companies hire them as needed and discard them when the immediate need is past. Companies will hire programmers and DBAs and QA personnel as regular employees because they have a direct effect on the process of turning out marketable product. But tech writers do not. So when a company reaches a point where it needs to field a help system or some other kind of documentation for customer use, they’ll hire a TW on a 6-month contract and when it’s over, he’s out the door.

In late 1999 my boss, the VP of product development for the company, told me, half-joking, that technical writers were considered a necessary evil in business. He said the job description would not exist at all if it were not for the fact that customers expect documentation. Companies don’t want to have to hire TWs because they are a drain on the company’s resources. They have to be paid, housed, and given equipment and support, but what they turn out does not contribute to the value of the product. And since then, his words have been proven by every other place I’ve worked.

Think about the career progress in tech writing –- there really isn’t any. If you are a programmer or engineer, you could have a career path something like this: Engineer > Team Leader > Project Manager > Product Line Manager > Director > VP of Engineering/Product Development > CEO.

A business type or sales could expect a career path something like this: First job > Lead > Region/Product Manager > VP Sales/Marketing > CFO/CEO.

Another IT type like a DBA could expect something like: DBA > Lead Designer > Network Manager > IT Division Manager > CIO > CEO.

Tech writer? Well, to begin with, today almost all technical writers are hired individually and are individual assets for totally separate departments in the company. And that’s if it’s a fairly large company. A lot of tech writing gets done for fairly small companies where you’re the only tech writer they’ll ever have. If they do ever hire more, it’s because they have projects come up for which they need documents, so they’ll hire someone to support that particular project for however long it lasts, and then that writer is out the door.

To have a chance of advancement in tech writing as a TW, you must work in a company which is large enough, and old-fashioned enough, that it has a hierarchical structure related to document production. Such companies are scarce today and getting scarcer. Most such structures for documentation today will be found in government agencies, which opens a whole new can of worms. So if you get hired by a company that has a documentation structure where there is some chance of advancement, how much advancement can you expect? Well, after you’ve worked there several years, you may become a team leader, and run a group of 3 or 4 people. After several more years, you may have a shot at becoming the documentation division manager. And after that, nothing.

There is no path upward from that. Nobody gets promoted into upper management because he’s a good writer. And nobody ever gets promoted because he’s good at managing writers. The upper levels do not consider tech writing important and no matter how good you are at meeting schedules or dealing with problems or fiddling the budget, experience with documents is absolutely meaningless when it comes to deciding who becomes the new VP. What matters is perception of dollar value to the company.

A few years ago, Wired magazine had an article about problems common in database management. It pointed out that one of the worst problems was, there is usually a lack of good documentation. But the same article recommended that the way to handle such problems was during the design phase, and to set up the databases in such a way as to minimize the need for documentation. It basically said that doing a lot of work to ensure good documentation was not cost effective in the long run, because management cares that you give them their data on time, and they don’t care if you do it with or without documentation. The article ended with the oh-so-true observation, “No one ever got promoted for having good documentation.”

One reason most business people care nothing about documentation and what goes into making it is, they think nothing of writing. They are sure it’s easy. They can write — they’ve seen themselves do it. They have no idea just how awful they are as writers, but they think writing is easy so they have no respect for someone who does it for a living.

Also, and more important, tech writing (documentation) is not seen as contributing to the bottom line. There is no way for a writer or a writing department manager to claim that his work made a verifiable difference to the figure at the bottom of the profit/loss statement. And for that reason, anyone connected to documentation will always be considered a necessary burden, at best.

As you go through life you will find upper level management who used to be tech writers themselves. But in every case, you will find they did not go from tech writing to management. They sidestepped. They got out of tech writing and into programming or business analysis, and *then* they started climbing the corporate ladder. The plain fact is, the career advancement ladder for technical writers has maybe one and a half rungs. There is no such thing as a career in technical writing; there is only a succession of jobs, some of which last longer than others. If you want a chance at a true career, which includes the chance to do different things and rise to a better position, either get out of technical writing or don’t enter it in the first place.

Good luck.

Download MP3 (to download, right-click and select Save Target As)
Duration: 55 min.

Several weeks ago I wrote about my trip to Brigham Young University-Idaho and the presentation I gave there titled “Debunking the Boredom Myth of Technical Writing.” This podcast is a recording of my presentation.

My presentation was part of the professional writing conference that BYU-Idaho puts on annually for their writing and literature students. In the presentation, I talk about a prevalent myth that many students have — that technical writing is a boring career. To combat the myth, I explore the variety of content technical writers produce, including video, diagrams and illustrations, quick reference material, wikis, online help, information architecture, blogs, wikis, podcasts, and usability.

You can view my accompanying PowerPoint presentation here. Additionally, links to the three videos I played are below:

• WordPress 2.6
• Harrymillermedia
• Commoncraft on Wikis

The Boredom Myth: Unlike what a tech comm professor taught me, tech writing is more than just formatting the layout of phone books.

Last week I drove up at Rexburg, Idaho to give a presentation on technical writing to the English majors at Brigham Young University Idaho (BYU-I) as part of their annual Pre-Professional Writing Conference. Most of the students in the group intend to pursue a literary career, such as writing books, editing manuscripts in publishing houses, or teaching literature in college or high school.

I was scheduled to present on technical writing, but my presentation felt more than that to me. I felt a mission to correct what had been falsely taught to me as a college student and which caused me to wander around for five years of my professional life trying to figure things out. Let me explain.

When I was a student at BYU Provo, I took an English survey course (typical of most English major curriculums). When the technical writing professor spoke to us (right after the cowboy literature professor, the feminist literature professor, and the postmodern deconstructionist professor), she explained that one task technical writers might do is format phone books. She then showed pictures of phone book layouts and mentioned font.

As I sat there, a young ideal-minded, writing-bound student, I took a personal vow to never become her. To never end up so boring, so undriven. Ending up in a little office, formatting phone books all day would be the equivalent of literary death. I eternally struck the possibility of technical writing from my career’s vocabulary. Never, never, never would I become a technical writer.

After I graduated from BYU with a degree in English, I didn’t know what to do, so I earned an MFA in literary nonfiction from Columbia in New York. All through my MFA, I felt anxiety about the career path I would follow. My wife gave birth to our first child at the time, and the cost of living in New York maxed out our income each month.

When I did graduate, I found a composition teaching job abroad at The American University in Cairo and spent the next two years in Egypt. After two years, I realized that my composition teaching career was going nowhere. I also realized I hated teaching — a fact not often considered by prospective literature students who simply plan on teaching without ever having taught.

Above all, I despised grading student papers, justifying over and over the B and C grades. At one point I dropped my grading pen and noted that reading student essays was not only laborious, it was also damaging to my own sense of writing. I wanted to write, not teach. So I left composition teaching and moved back to the U.S.

With a BA in English, an MFA in literary nonfiction, and two years of full-time teaching experience, I wasn’t marketable for any high-paying career. Through a friend of my sister, I landed a job as a copywriter for a Scientologist-heavy health and nutrition company in Clearwater, Florida, whose main product was a bottle of protein pills for triathletes. Earning 32k a year, without benefits, I wrote marketing copy for the company, exhausting my creative energy with press releases, web copy, product fliers, brochures, newsletter articles, email campaigns, and anything else I could write to promote and sell more BioBuild.

After six months, the $9,000 of savings I’d built up in Egypt steadily declined. One night I sat down to calculate my financial standings and realized I needed a higher paying job if I was to survive. At that point I remembered what a colleague in Egypt once told me, that I would be a perfect fit for technical writing. So I began my search for an entry-level job as a technical writer.

Thanks to some articulate copy I wrote about how protein works, a hiring manager at a financial company in Florida (who had a PhD in biology) saw potential in me, and together with a sample help file I wrote in RoboHelp, hired me onto their team. I was their first hire after four years of a freeze from the tech stock crash.

As a technical writer with little experience, I made only $40k a year, and so I soon took a second job teaching writing at ITT-Tech on the weekends. For the next year, I became a careful student of technical writing, mastering RoboHelp, Paint Shop Pro, and other tools; learning methods for procedural writing, memorizing the corporate style guide, and examining other corporate style guides; figuring out how to crack open a SME for information, how to gain access to the right development environments, how to organize chaotic jumbles of information, and finally how to package it all up into an attractive guide.

After working as a technical writer for a time, I found that it indeed was a good fit for me. Not only was I immersed in technology, I also had a knack for clarity and organization with technical material. I was also an expert at the tools, hacking Robohelp’s source files to create a branded skin, and producing large amounts of documentation in a relatively quick timeframe.

Eventually my salary rose enough that I could quit my second job. After about a year, I was promoted to a senior level, which included even more salary increases. I later transitioned to another company that paid better. But more than simply finding a sustainable salary, I felt I finally found my career — the answer to the elusive question about what to do with my writing skills. I’d found the path that I once sat up late at night wondering about while I was an MFA student, and while I was teaching in Egypt. My daily work didn’t involve formatting phone books, and it wasn’t boring at all — at least not as boring as I imagined it could be.

As a result of these experiences, my presentation to BYU Idaho students was more than just a survey of possible technical writing careers. I was dispelling the myth that the BYU tech. comm. professor taught years earlier. Life as a technical writer does not actually consist of dreadfully dull tasks all day. I now had a chance to point students in the right direction before they spent the next five years of their lives wandering in financial frustration, trying to support a family on the notion that they would teach or write a bestseller.

Grammar

To kick off the Pre-Professional conference, Marilyn Arnold, a distinguished writer from BYU-Provo, gave the opening keynote address. Arnold read a lengthy personal essay on what it means to become a writer. I was surprised to see her read her opening address, but her text was well-written, funny, and full of examples. The only problem was that she focused — for the first 20 minutes — entirely on the heightened awareness of grammar that grips writers’ minds. You begin to see every little comma error, every misuse of lay and lie, every misspelling, she said. And you’re tormented by these language errors.

Sure, I’m guilty of the same hyper-grammatical mindset at times. But a writer is much, much more than a grammarian. A writer actively thinks; he or she has a keen sense of analysis and perspective. A writer can communicate with clarity and flair in ways others can’t. A writer can structure content with story.

While correct grammar is important, if it’s your main perspective, you sell yourself short. In the world of technical communication, you mislead others into thinking you can only proofread text on the user interface, rather than improve the overall design. I wanted to raise my hand and say, Is that it? Is grammar expertise all you gain when you become a writer? She eventually did turn the corner into other larger topics, but all I remember about her talk is the emphasis on grammar.

Performance

I had a couple of other experiences that made me think about what it means to be a writer. While eating breakfast among the invited speakers, I sat next to a literature professor from BYU Provo who told me she refrained from blogging because “blogs were performative.”

Of course you hear accusations every now and then that blogging is a navel-gazing, egomaniacal activity. But that’s only true in some cases, for some people. Here the English professor had taken it to another level, comparing blogging to performance art, to people who sit down with the intent of merely inciting discussions on listservs, engaging in attention-getting techniques to direct the focus on to themselves without substance.

Isn’t all writing, I suggested, performative to some degree or another? The minute you write with an audience in mind, you begin to deviate from your normal course of behavior. You begin considering what others will think and how they’ll react. As a result you distort what you might write without that audience.

I tried to make my argument while expressing some understanding of her perspective. But in the end I think her performance contention was merely an excuse for not writing.

Before long, breakfast ended and we all started mingling with others. Personally, I’ve never met an egomaniacal blogger — just people who like to write.

Critical Thinking

My host, Josh Allen, introduced me to at least a dozen colleagues. I later learned that Josh was a lone Democrat in a sea of Republicans. Rexburg, Idaho, it turns out, is a town that is 93% Republican. It makes rooting for Obama, or worse, putting Obama-Biden signs in your front yard, a risky activity that draws an immense amount of attention to yourself.

For the first two years at BYU Idaho, Josh kept silent when political discussions arose. But as the elections approached, he broke out of his shell and volunteered to be the faculty advisor for the college’s Democratic club.

Josh did put Obama-Biden signs in his yard, and on three separate occasions, political vandals took down and shredded the signs. The acts of vandalism inspired him to write a detailed, thought-provoking letter to the local newspaper editor.

I think when politics comes up on campus, Josh sees it as an opportunity to help students think critically about the issues. He exposes logical gaps, points out problems with assumptions, and describes other poor thinking. Teaching students to think critically, so at least they won’t automatically believe or forward senseless political emails, is practically one of Josh’s missions in life.

A critical perspective is certainly at the heart of any writer’s mindset. To think for yourself, to question assumptions, to look at issues from fresh angles and risk voicing a different opinion — surely this is the first step in becoming a writer. This is the substance that the grammarian lacks, or that the performer is searching to possess. And yet, critical thinking alone is insufficient to become a writer. Becoming a writer takes more than merely a questioning mind and a mentality against herds.

Story

The most anticipated speaker at the conference was an Argentinian poet, short-story writer, and novelist named Ana Maria Schua, who’d flown all the way from Argentina and spoke with a heavy Spanish accent. The students packed into the auditorium to listen to Ana Maria Schua speak. She had an endearing laugh that punctuated her speech every once in a while — the kind of laugh that made you laugh when she laughed.

Schua recounted her own journey to becoming a writer. At sixteen, she compiled her first book of poems, but struggled to find a publisher. She won various literary contests, which boosted her confidence. She compiled a book of short stories, which she also struggled to publish (but eventually did).

To write novels, she used existing structures as “cake pans,” into which she inserted her own experiences. She combined different structures, characters, and plots to build Frankenstein-like texts. She had a gift for the language, she said, but had to learn the art of telling stories. Novels were a genre she had to study, but microfictions came naturally to her.

Schua offered plenty of insights into what it takes to become a writer:

• The first step in becoming a writer is to immerse yourself in reading. But if you require that advice, you’ll never be a writer.
• Every act of writing is a negotiation between what you plan to write and what comes from your fingers.
• If inspiration is gone, replace it with perspiration. Writer’s block doesn’t exist in a copywriting agency.
• Limitations help you write. Absolute freedom is puzzling.
• You need to have a gift to be a writer.
• Vanity is a necessary attribute for writing — you have to like what you write.
• “Eyes see more than imagination” — Da Vinci. (Refers to the power of borrowing from reality rather than inventing from scratch.)
• Not everything you write is good or worth keeping. Selection — the ability to delete — is important.
• Bad male novelists write improbable adventure stories; bad female novelists can’t see outside themselves.

Throughout her career, Schua published around 40 books (many were children’s books, she noted). I found her talk motivating. I wanted to go home and immediately start writing stories and sketching out ideas.

Students asked questions for a good 30 minutes after her presentation, and others asked her to sign her books. She was an inspiring example of what each student could be when he or she became a writer. She exemplified the literary life.

My Presentation

I had so much anticipation and energy when I gave my presentation that I spoke for 60 minutes straight without engaging students with any questions. I purposely covered aspects of technical writing that students probably hadn’t considered: video, wikis, illustrations, single-source publishing, blogs, podcasts, screencasts, information architecture, usability, quick reference materials, and the general immersion in words.

I showed surveys on the question of whether technical writing was boring. 89% of students thought it was boring, compared to only 7% of professionals. I played excerpts of podcasts, gave a live demo of single sourcing, showed examples of usability in everyday objects, and showed three entertaining video tutorial clips.

My second session involved 45 minutes of question and answers, during which I carefully answered every student’s question with more articulation than usual. Fifteen more students attended the question and answer session than my 60 minute presentation.

In the end, did hordes of students turn their attention to a new, previously unplanned career in technical writing? Did they drop their desires to spend their careers writing novels or break into Random House as book editors?

Not really. A few students thanked me for my practical advice. One student said he was glad I mentioned that teaching isn’t for everyone. Another said my advice was more practical and useful than the information someone gave the previous year. A faculty member asked me about wikis for one of his class projects, and some others who didn’t attend my presentation nevertheless complimented on it, relaying they’d heard good things about it.

But really, the conference made me reflect on what it means to become a writer. We start out with grand literary ambitions in college. We want to author books that will become classics, or make others rethink the world through our writing. Could technical writing ever fulfill that creative drive to write? To put it more bluntly, if you became a technical writer, could you still feel inside that you had “become a writer”? Or as a technical writer, are you merely using your writing skills?

I think there is room for interpretation in the answer. Writer is a word that has gradations of meaning. In my world, I know I’m a writer, but I’m still longing to become the writer I want to be.

Hi Tom,

My name is Hannah, and I live in San Antonio, Texas. I found your web site when I typed technical writing in google.com. You have a beautiful family.

I am a part-time Accountant for a non-profit organization. I do not enjoy accounting and the desire to write has always been a part of my soul. My desire to write burns in my heart daily. The part-time accounting position pays the bills, however I need to find a way to obtain a writing position in order to fulfill my desire, and help my husband keep a roof over our heads. Do you have any suggestions of where a bored, hungry to write accountant can find work writing? I am also looking for a way to work from home. Currently, I work from home one day per week, and the other 3 days on site. Do you think you could help me?

Thank you for your time, and I hope to hear from you soon.

Have a great weekend!

Hannah,

Thanks for writing. You can make a better living as an accountant (but for a for-profit company) than as a writer. If you have a creative drive, start a blog and write at nights. When you make a living as a professional writer, you often write about things you don’t enjoy writing about. For example, you might write press releases about protein vitamins, or software manuals for products you would never use yourself.

If you go to WordPress.com, you can start a blog for free and write about whatever you want. It will cure your itch to write without putting you into the poverty house for lack of income. You might also try to harness your accounting expertise and write help material for accounting software.

Tom

(Note: Names and locations changed for privacy.)

My name is Kalyani. I am 37 yrs old and live in Saudi Arabia. I have finished my Diploma in Electronics (4 year course). I was working at Hewlett Packard in India before moving to Saudi.

In this country, women have very few opportunities to work i.e., only in the schools or hospitals. I chose to work in the school as an English and Computer Science teacher. Now I have moved into the administration.

After 7 years in this country, I want to move back to India. While looking at the job market, I thought of re-training and getting into “Technical writing”. I have a good command over English and a flair for writing. My computer skills are very good.

I have 4 months before I go back to India. I wanted to start my online training from ‘The Writers’ Block’, a training institute in Bangalore, India.

I have a few questions for you:

1. Is “Technical writing” an interesting career? (I like to be creative and take up challenges)
2. Can you maintain your work-life balance? (I have 3 boys aged 9, 5 and 3)
3. Does it pay well?
4. In the long term, is it worth being a ‘technical writer’?
5. Do you think online training is a right choice? Or should I take the regular course??

I hope you will help me out with my queries whenever you find the time.

[Me: I asked Kalyani to tell me the state of outsourcing in India.]

Right now, outsourcing is at a peak in India, especially in Bangalore from where I come. There are many BPOs and there are few technical writers. Unlike software technicians who are in plenty, technical writers are still few in number. I’ll go for this when the demand is still good.
Most of the European and American companies have outsourced their services in India. So I think this is the time to go for it.

I’ll look forward to reading your blog post.

Thanks again,

Kalyani

Thanks for writing, Kalyani. It’s always interesting to hear from readers in Saudi Arabia. You have an excellent background for entering the field of technical writing. With a degree in electronics, experience as an English and Computer Science teacher, and work experience at HP, you are probably well suited for a job as a technical writer. Let me try to answer your questions.

1. Is “Technical writing” an interesting career? (I like to be creative and take up challenges)

Yes, it is an interesting career. However, you can read some posts and discussions on this site that talk about whether technical writing is boring. Also read this post that explores whether I’d become a technical writer again if starting over from scratch. I recently asked a 2 question survey to see if my readers felt the same way.

You can see the results of 16 responses so far. Basically, only 31% of people would definitely become technical writers if starting over. 37% said maybe, and 31% said no.

The funny thing is, most of those who said no would instead move into instructional design, web design, or usability, which are all somewhat close to technical writing anyway. (By the way, the survey is still open.)
Although reading those posts may not put technical writing in a glamorous spotlight, it truly is a solid professional field with a lot of room to grow and explore new technologies. I do enjoy my job as a technical writer.

Technical writers can focus on a variety of things (content management, information architecture, e-learning, usability, single sourcing, XML, DITA, web design, multimedia), but the majority of technical writers spend their days creating help material such as online help, printed manuals, quick reference guides, and writing and formatting other content.

Of course it’s not riveting, but as jobs go, it’s not bad. I would say that technical writing is a satisfying career, but not a fulfilling one. (Vague on purpose there.)

2. Can you maintain your work-life balance? (I have 3 boys aged 9, 5 and 3)

It depends on your company. Most technical writers I know maintain a very comfortable work-life balance. It’s nothing like investment banking or law or medicine where you’re expected to put in 60+ hour weeks as the norm.

I have an 8 to 5 day, and I come home to a home-cooked meal and then wrestle with my kids for a while before putting them to bed and wandering online to post a few entries on my blog. Okay, so it’s not that idyllic, but the work-life balance is one of the best things about being a technical writer.

3. Does it pay well?

Yes, technical writing is probably the most lucrative career in writing apart from being a best-selling novelist or becoming a big-time publisher in New York City. Of the careers one can pursue as a writer — copywriter, copy editor, proofreader, essayist, journalist, teacher, professor — technical writers earn a lot more, at least 1/3 more in salary, I’d say.

For surveys, see the WritersUA 2008 salary survey, which found the average salary of a technical writer in the U.S. to be about 76k a year. Everyone I talk to thinks this number is a little high. In 2006, Money Magazine named technical writing the 13th best job in America and said the average salary was 57K a year.

My own opinion is that the real average salary for technical writers is somewhere between 57 and 76. It depends on where you live, how many years of experience you have, what company you work for, and how good you are at negotiating a salary.

4. In the long term, is it worth being a ‘technical writer’?

I assume this question has something to do with intangible rewards, particularly compared to careers in education. As a teacher, one often feels an internal reward in helping students learn and grow and see the world in a new light. (Or so they say.)

Well, the problem with feeling great worth as a technical writer is that we’re so disconnected with our users. We don’t watch them use our help. Teachers in the classroom can directly observe the impact of their teaching. But I can’t see the indescribable joy that comes to those who read my instructions in moments of frustration and suddenly “get it.” I can’t observe users who, after struggling for hours, finally turn to the help and within minutes fall down on their knees and kiss the software manual I wrote, tears falling down their cheeks in gratitude.

I used to be a copywriter writing press releases, web copy, and all kinds of other campaigns to get people to buy nutritional supplements. While I was allowed be more creative as a copywriter, it wasn’t worth it because I didn’t believe in the products. In contrast, as a technical writer, I feel that helping people understand complicated technology so they can do their jobs better, become more efficient, and feel more comfortable with software applications is worthwhile.

But “worth it” really depends on you. What makes life worth it to you? (Here’s an article that explores whether technical writing is a calling or job.) The sense of worth varies for every person according to their perceived calling and life purpose. Someone gifted in medicine would not feel that writing help content and making video tutorials is “worth it.” A job worth it for that person is in the exam room or ER. But for writers, technical writing is an activity much more worthwhile.

5. Do you think online training is a right choice? Or should I take the regular course??

I don’t know. I learned much of what I know about technical writing from my first job. I learned most of the tools on my own, and picked up style and other techniques by looking at manuals, trying different techniques, and in general reading from various sources. A course could be highly beneficial.
Read this comment by Mike, which he left on a post I wrote called “What’s the Best Thing You’ve Done to Grow Your Career?”:

Without a doubt, the best “move” I made in regard to my technical writing career was completing a graduate degree in communication. The sheer number of programs (broad-based professional programs to specialized technical programs) make a graduate degree possible for every practicing technical writer. And the networking opportunities within a graduate program are extremely beneficial.

It’s never a bad idea to take a course in anything, really. (However, I’m a little confused by the name of the Institute you mentioned, the “Writer’s Block.” Let’s hope they teach you how to avoid that.)

Final Thoughts

As a final comment on offshoring and outsourcing, I was talking to a technical writer at Novell last week. Novell apparently has writers and developers in several different countries, including India. This writer works regularly with about 14 writers from Bangalore. She said that within 5 years, technical writing would disappear in the U.S. and be completely enveloped by outsourced companies in India and elsewhere.

I’m not sure I believe that, because technical writers fit with engineers like peanut butter and jelly — the two go together really well, and colocation is essential. But the instant you move your engineers to another country, the technical writers are sure to follow. Because Novell has engineers in other countries, they placed their technical writers there too.

By the way, I did interview an Indian technical writer for a podcast last year. You can listen to it here.

Also, there’s a great listserv to join called Technical Writers of India. They post jobs and have an active discussion regularly. You might also connect with Rahul Prabhakar. He’s up to date with the latest trends with technical writing in India.

The good news is that salaries in the United States now average $76,044, up over $2000 from last year. The bad news is the gender gap in compensation is alive and well. Men average $4000 more per year than women. WritersUA reports that the gap is growing, not shrinking.

For survey details, see the WritersUA salary survey home page. Here’s their graph of salary by location.

The market is great right now for technical communicators.

I am a computer science Master’s student at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. I am in my second year and I am on the lookout for jobs. Other than the system software engineer posts, I am considering applying for a job as a technical writer too. I do love witing as much or maybe more than I love coding and understanding operating systems. I do have experience in system software but not in technical writing, though I do blog occasionally and I also have written a few technical how-tos.

Could you please tell me what the job of a technical writer is like? How different is it from that of a software engineer? I know it pays less, but I guess you might get more satisfaction especially if you like writing? Could you, if you have the time, tell me how a day at work goes like? Do you think with my limited experience, I have a shot as a technical writer and in the area that I’m interested in?

I love getting questions like this. Of course technical writing isn’t creative writing, but it does require a lot of writing skills. If you can organize complex topics and communicate concepts clearly and concisely, conforming to a specific style, you probably have most of the writing skills you need.

As far as the salary and economic outlook, technical writing was listed as the 13th best job in America, according to Money Magazine. Technical writers earn an average salary of $57k per year. Software engineers, in contrast, appear at the top of the list and have an average salary of $80k. The job growth for engineers is projected at 46%, while that of technical writers is 23%.

In short, the economic outlook for the field of technical writing is good. As long as the tech industry is hot, the demand for technical writers will be there. Almost every software project needs a technical writer.

A lot of your job as a technical writer involves figuring out what the engineer is building. If you have an engineering background, you’re often a step ahead of other technical writers. If you can read programming code, your potential for higher income increases significantly.

The questions you asked can be answered in a lot of different ways, so I’ll give you a sample of my typical day. Below is more like a composite of different tasks all done within several weeks.

Tom’s Typical Day as a Technical Writer

• Ride metro to work — listen to podcasts on technology topics. (Tech Writer Vocies and DMN Communications are great podcasts to listen to for technical communication.)
• Attend morning scrum meeting, where each team member reports on what they did the day before. Try to figure out what has changed in the app., what new features or functionality have been added or are planned.
• Return to desk and explore the application. With development environment access, the app is only partly-functional. Have to fill in the gaps of how it could work. Experiment, test, click here and there. Guess, test out hypotheses, isolate, observe, try, etc.
• Visit software engineers to ask questions about application functionality. Inquire about workflow and other procedures.
• Visit business analyst to ask about user characteristics and tasks. What tasks will users want to perform? Try to determine who users are, clarify the different roles and their familiarity with the concepts.
• Return to desk and validate online help file by meticulously going over the steps to confirm the accuracy.
• Create screencasts using Camtasia Studio that provide audiovisual tutorials for the most confusing tasks. Getting the timing right for the slides is painstaking, but the end product is appealing.
• Create Visio diagrams representing workflows and other processes in the application. Submit to project manager for review.
• Create one-page quick reference guides in Adobe Indesign for each user role. Meticulously confirm accuracy of the steps.
• Discover new functionality in software app that wasn’t told to me. Have to return to the documentation and update it.
• Attend meeting about project, listen to engineers and project managers and business analysts talk for a while. Ask when they’re going to code the help button. Realize that the project is going to be delayed several weeks.
• Tackle bug with online help output. Display in IE needs a style adjustment. Tweak css for a while.
• Access project sites to see if any technical documentation is relevant to my needs (and up-to-date). Skim through requirements. Find discrepancies between requirements and development environment. Ask project manager which is right.
• Add more topics to online help based on new features and functionality discovered in the app.
• Suggest to engineers that they change some of the on-screen text and make the buttons behave more predictably.
• Print out documentation for the business analyst to review, and set up a meeting to encourage her to review it.
• Write article on new features for release notes and corporate newsletter. Pitch idea of a product blog.
• Return to metro for home — put on headphones and listen to podcasts.

That’s sort of a typical day/week/month/life of a technical writer.

You mentioned you’re in Vancouver. Vancouver happens to be a hub of tech writing. Last year I gave a presentation titled “20 Usability Tips for Blogging” at Doc Train West (held in downtown Vancouver). This year I’m going to be on a blogging panel with several noteworthy bloggers. If you can make it, (May 6-9), I highly recommend that you attend the Doc Train West 2008 conference.

Is technical writing satisfying? In a way, yes. I previously worked as a marketing copywriter. Sometimes I had a hard time feeling good about what I was writing, because I myself didn’t buy the products. I know technical writing helps people. Today I received an email from someone who mentioned they used the help and now they understand a difficult concept in the app. That felt good. With all the people out there who are confused by technology, who feel frustrated and try to find answers online or in help files, it feels satisfying to know I’m engaged in a good cause.

Through my examples above, I tried to show that technical writers do a lot more than writing. Very little time in the day is taken up by pure writing. There’s a lot of design, discovery, visuals and other tasks that writers do. My blog is actually what cures my itch to write.

You’ve probably wondered if technical writing is boring. I wrote a post on this a while back and received some great feedback. I think the key is to keep yourself engaged in the field. Writing a blog and creating podcasts make me enthusiastic about technical communication more than anything else.

Specifically, listening to podcasts can give you ideas, help you see how others have approached problems, and expand your knowledge in numerous ways. Unlike blog posts, you can often feel people’s excitement and energy through their voices.

If any readers have any advice or reflections for Anoop, please share them in the comments. You can also describe your typical day. I’d be interested to read that myself.

March 29 update: Definitely check out this Shanghai tech writer’s description of her typical day. A lot of parallels, despite being on the other side of the globe.