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Subject:RE: OT- Sad Lament of a Sole TW From:"George Mena" <George -dot- Mena -at- esstech -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 29 Jan 2004 09:37:06 -0800
STC has a Lone Writers Special Interest Group (SIG), with a rather lively and informative membership, that is a great support system for lone writers. It's also got some great goodies that you can download for free that'll help you with your day-to-day TW operations.
I myself have been a lone writer four times during my 23-year career as a technical writer. In one case, I was the lone writer for two years solid. In my current position, I've been a lone writer twice here for a combined period of 18 months. In a third case, I was the lone writer for another 10 months. Suffice it to say I'm used to it. At least here, in my current position, I can get a hot meal for dinner for free five nights a week. That makes an enormous difference.
Your employer can at least spring for pizza and root beer for you. Make it happen. It's cheap and a no-brainer for the company, and it's not unreasonable. :D
You do the best job you can do when you're a lone writer. And you work long hours when you're a lone writer; the hours go with the territory. Most of all, though, you remember two things:
1) There's only one of you. You do count, even if only to yourself.
2) After a 12-hour day, one tends to be rather useless and is better off going home. Even your bosses know this. And both state and Federal law insist on time-and-a-half pay for overtime after an 8-hour day. Demand it. If they don't pay overtime, demand a raise. No overtime or raise? Bye!
On the multiple language support, you're better off demanding that the company spend some money on hiring a translation service. You don't have the time to waste translating the same doc suite into a number of different languages. Make the company be more responsible for itself by making them spend the money on such a service. You stick to massaging the soft copy that comes back from them. It's a better use of your time and their money, especially where their ISP bill is concerned. What, you think Internet bandwidth is cheap? Yeah, right. :D
Finally, before you send anything out for what seems to be a first-and-final review, run your spell checker. Both Word and FrameMaker have those functions as part of their programs. Use them. Don't get dinged on your spelling when you can avoid it -- and you CAN avoid it. When the "powers that be" do review and sign off on your work, the employer can only blame its higher ups for not having performed a better review of your work.
Remember, there's only one you. Nobody's perfect, which is a good thing.
The last guy who was perfect here on the Earth wound up being crucified on a cross in the Middle East 2000 years ago. That means perfection is never all it's cracked up to be. In fact, it's a bit despised if it's allowed to live too long; everyone else gets jealous beyond belief -- and swears revenge.
On that note, I'll close now and go back to my Springsteen in the headset.
