We writers tend to have a romantic idea about a creative muse that comes and goes, whispering interesting ideas to our minds. But the idea of a creative muse is, I'm pretty sure, no more magical or mysterious than the same process by which we remember dreams. Ultimately, the more we write down our dreams, the more our brain learns to remember dreams. Similarly, the more we write, the more our brain [creative muse] starts thinking of thing...
Through a very fortunate circumstance, I was recently admitted to the ever-growing community of BlackBerry users. Owning a BlackBerry is a wonderful feeling -- it's like having the Internet in your pocket, wherever you go. At any point in time, you can check your mail (both work and gmail), read your feeds, check your calendar, instant message someone, navigate yourself on a map, check the weather, glance at the New York Times headlines, ...
We started a blog for Sally last week. The URL is theordinaryprincess.com. So far she's been excited about it, although one day she did ask me why we blog. It's funny, because Shannon and I both blog fairly regularly. Now Sally blogs too. Just today she was complaining that Mom didn't help her on the computer and she didn't get to write her post for the day. Seven years old, and already concerned that she didn't get to write her daily pos...
Last night I took Susan to the hospital to get stitches for a cut on her forehead. She and Sally were playing behind the sofa chair. Following Sally's instruction to pull the chair out a little, I didn't realize Susan was perched on top, and she came quickly tumbling down, hitting her head on the windowsill ledge. Going to the hospital with one of my kids is always an unsettling experience. To hold her little hand while she cried and crie...
At times most every blogger feels some trepidation about hitting the Publish button. Especially when your post expresses a strong viewpoint or relates a personal story with risky details. You feel trepidation because you're putting yourself in the public sphere -- in front of your employer -- and bloggers get fired every once in a while. Chez Pazienza, a CNN producer, was fired a week ago because of the strong views he expressed on his b...
Conference season is approaching and presenters are busy preparing their notes and PowerPoint slides. Now is the perfect time to review some good ways to bomb a presentation (especially since I did a great job bombing a presentation I gave today). 1. Prepare your presentation without any awareness of your audience. About the worst thing you can do is grossly misunderstand your audience. Assume they're familiar with an application they are...
I used to think drop-down hotspots were the cat's pajamas, until I realized they're problematic for single source chunking. Let me elaborate. Drop-down hotspots seem like they'd be all the rage -- the ability to compress massive amounts of information into little spaces that are easy to scan. You can get around the bloated TOC that intimidates readers with its endless books that expand and expand. Instead you make your help file look thin...
Update: Listen to the presentation here. I'm no longer president of my STC chapter in Florida. But I'm excited to give a presentation to the local STC-Intermountain chapter on blogging and podcasting next week. Here are the details of my upcoming presentation. Have a Blog? a Podcast? Want one? Come learn everything you need to know Date: Feb 28, 2008 Time: 7:00 P.M. Location: SLCC South City Campus, Room W111 E, 1575 S. State St., Salt La...
In "FREE: The Economics of Abundance and the Price of Zero," Wired magazine's Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson talks about the gift economy and how you can make products free without losing your financial return. One idea that caught my attention was to give your products away for bloggers to review. With one of his previous books (The Long Tail, I believe), Chris says he sent out 800 copies to bloggers to review. As a result, the web was ...
Sarah Maddox gives us a interesting glimpse into the life of an agile technical writer, or more descript, extreme technical writing, XTW. If you work in an agile environment, definitely check out these two posts: The Agile Technical Writer (I) The Agile Technical Writer II (Although ffeathers is already in my feedreader, I missed these posts in the firehose of information and didn't discover them until I read Anne Gentle's latest post...
I'm proud to announce that Camtasia Studio is a new sponsor for my blog. I've been using Camtasia Studio to create video tutorials for the past month, and I really like it. I was converted to voice tutorials rather than caption-based tutorials when a user told me he preferred voice 10 to 1. I also prefer voice rather than captions, and voice-screen-demos are a lot easier to create, too. Camtasia 5 not only excels in voice, but allows you ...
I've discovered two new blogs that I think are definitely worthwhile to add to your Google Reader: The first is Helpscribe, by Craig Haiss. He seems to have good common sense and I enjoy reading his perspective. His content is very focused on help authoring. The second blog is Sharon's Madcap Blog, by Sharon Burton. She's an intelligent, experienced writer who has recently joined Madcap Software and is a project manager for Blaze. As al...
A week ago I read a flattering comment in one of Heidi's posts. She says Intercom articles would be more enjoyable distributed as blog posts, and then adds that good blog posts are just as good as Intercom articles. Heidi writes: The thing about Intercom is that I think that these articles could all be blog posts. It would be a lot handier to read these articles in a Google Reader style because currently, to read these articles online, yo...
Technical writing careers are often a mystery to those on the outside. What do technical writing jobs involve? What is the industry like? What is the career path of a technical writer, and what challenges do technical writers face? Carmen, a student in a technical management program, found me by searching for "technical writers" on Yahoo.com. Fulfilling an assignment in a Career Development course to contact someone working in the technic...
Here's my list of the Top 10 Workspace Configurations for technical writers. (By "workspace configuration," I mean the characteristics of your work environment that make you most productive and happy.) Dual Monitors. Allows you to put the application you're documenting on one screen, your authoring tool on the other. No more scrunched windows or frustrations with constantly maximizing and minimizing your screens. Laptop with docking stat...
