What is a reasonable training period for newbie writers?

["Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

Krista Van Laan wonders <<What is a reasonable amount of time in which to
expect a newcomer to the field to be productive? 3 months? 6 months? A
year?>>

How about "immediately"? If you've hired them to write, this should be
because they're capable of writing. <g> That's an unfair interpretation of
your question, but I guess the real question might be "how long until they
write well enough to X?" As you can imagine, "X" could be many things: write
as well as I do, write well enough that I don't need to constantly hold
their hand, write a minimum of Y pages per day, and so on. You may in fact
need to set different deadlines for different values of X.

It's probably reasonable to give a newcomer a few weeks to get to know the
product, the developers who will provide technical information and reviews,
and to learn how the employer functions. Add a month or two to learn the
company style and the manager's expectations for quality and productivity,
and add a few more months to come "fully" up to speed. Would 6 months be
unreasonable? Probably not, and a real pro should take much less time,
whereas you'll need more time for someone who isn't a particularly
experienced writer to begin with and who doesn't know your tools. But 6
months seems to be a more than fair starting point?

--Geoff Hart, FERIC, Pointe-Claire, Quebec
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca

"Quebits took the art of manual writing to such extremes [that] the first
human scholars who'd tried to decipher their written language had spent a
lifetime working through what they hoped would be a definitive piece of
Quebit culture. No one was quite ready to say it wasn't, but the huge
ancient text had proved to be a manual for installing a sewage system within
a city."--Julie Czerneda, "Changing Vision"

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Develop HTML-based Help with Macromedia Dreamweaver! (STC Discount.)
**NEW DATE/LOCATION!** January 16-17, 2001, New York, NY.
http://www.weisner.com/training/dreamweaver_help.htm or 800-646-9989.

Sponsored by SOLUTIONS, Conferences and Seminars for Communicators 
Publications Management Clinic, TECH*COMM 2001 Conference, and more 
http://www.SolutionsEvents.com or 800-448-4230

---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot-  Visit 
http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.