This week’s question comes from Mary in New York: I am a loyal reader of your blog and have gained more from it than all the seminars and continuing ed courses I’ve taken–which cost me a good chunk of my salary. Recently, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend which I hope you might consider blogging about. I’m an experienced technical writer currently looking for work, and … more »

A reader asks, Is my resume so awful that no one will hire me? I mean, I’d been laid-off so long it’s pitiful really. His resume is here. I opened up this question up to my friends on Twitter and to those who follow my blog. About 40 professional technical writers responded with all kinds of resume advice. The overall trend in the responses is … more »

If you’re a writer, the most logical side job for the weekends is freelance writing. You know, copyediting for websites or other projects that people have. I’ve done this in the past, mostly picking up jobs from my brother-in-law who designs interactive flash sites and games for people. At times, the clients need copy as well. However, I’ve pretty much stopped doing freelance writing, for … more »

oDesk Reports “WordPress” Fastest Growing In-Demand Skill in 2008 « WordPress Publisher Blog Writing is second, SEO is fourth, CSS is about tenth.

A listener to the Tech Writer Voices podcast suggested I do a podcast on the following: Give ideas to people who are just starting out in technical writing. What is the base of knowledge that every technical writer should have? And so in preparation for the podcast, I offer these five skills or characteristics as absolute musts for the technical writer:

Sometimes I would like to change my job title from “technical writer” to investigative reporter, because so often this is the task that we have. Information we need is not online, not in any documents, not even available in the application itself. We have to pry it from the minds of subject matter experts (SMEs), the techies who talk in acronyms and dream in code. … more »