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Subject:RE: What's the significance of a draft From:"Sean Brierley" <sbri -at- haestad -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 5 Sep 2002 09:57:46 -0400
Okay.
It's the company's desk, not yours. I could care less if the boss
rummaged through my desk, my e-mail, or my hard drive. For better or
worse, it's theirs. If it's mine and it's sensitive, I keep it out of
the office. Period. Full stop.
The boss apparently expects polished drafts; that's not unusual,
especially if your boss is not a professional technical writer. As for
your bosses motivations, I dunno. I would expect the boss to do that if
you had failed to provide a requested draft. I don't spell check much as
I go, either. I have a couple of global passes for such edits.
On the other hand, over the years I have become accustomed to needing a
polished draft to show at a moment's notice, so I always take the extra
time to create one and have it handy. Often, this draft is out-of-date
content-wise, but content is usually not what folks who demand such
drafts are after.
I also make it a habit to post my polished draft as a PDF in a public,
but unadvertised, location as a PDF. I also post intermediate drafts.
Thus, I'd offer that you are a tad sensitive, should learn from this and
have a polished draft hanging around, and you should get a tad more
communicative to head-off such unplanned interruptions. Now, go talk to
your boss and square this away . . ..
Your boss is a [censored]. If I caught my boss or peer rooting through
my office while I was out, grabbing material without asking what it was,
tearing through it, and then giving me the 3rd degree about errors in
whatever it was they found, I'd let them have it (in the most
professional way possible).
It's all about professionalism. What's it to your boss whether you
printed out a rough draft or not? Maybe you think better on paper.
Whatever the case, your boss was dead in the wrong to have pulled that,
and if I were you I wouldn't stand for it.
To answer your questions though, I don't really have a set guide for
what's a draft. I write, and when it looks like all the info's in there
I send it to development for a subject-matter review (no grammar - I
make that clear). I then take edits, wrap them in, fix the grammar, then
send it out to general review. Revise, rinse, lather, repeat as needed,
and then put it to bed.
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