Re: working with other writers

[Stephen Martin <stpats -at- storm -dot- ca>]

For my first major effort, third-line maintenance manual for a secure
Intranet product from Bell Sygma (mow CGI), I was teamed with another
"writer".  In reality, this fellow was a programmer from another project
who didn't have any work to do and so the powers that be decided that he
should go play Tech Writer.

Starting with the supplied Table of Contents, Larry and I met over the
course of the first day or two to flesh out the ToC, decide on the
format, styles, etc.  We then divided the chapters between the two of
us.  So far, so good.

The territory was dealt with, and no one was throwing their ego around,
but in the end, Larry spent more time playing around with Word's style
functions, developing styles for us to use (most of which were
rejected), then doing any actual writing.

I tried talking to Larry to explain what he had to do, and was backed up
on this by our supervisor, but the message never seemed to get through. 
Since management didn't seem to be taking any further action I just made
sure the job got done and that credit was properly assigned.

I think a stronger hand needed to be kept on Larry, pushing his nose to
the grindstone, but if I had acted any differently in the beginning,
i.e. trying to be the boss instead of co-operating, I think it would
have turned out worse. Not everyone is a Larry though, and as long as
everyone can check their ego at the door, you've got a good chance of
getting through this experience.

Good luck.

kstanzler -at- earthlink -dot- net wrote:
 
> I'm used to working alone, and now I find working with other writers
> challenging. What works? What doesn't? How do you deal with
> "territory"?