Re: Poll: Is technical writing a sellout or fallback career?

[voxwoman <voxwoman -at- gmail -dot- com>]

On Thu, Aug 7, 2008 at 4:04 PM, Tom Johnson <tomjohnson1492 -at- gmail -dot- com>wrote:

> Just to provide a little background on the poll question, why I would ask
> that, etc. --  I was asked by a colleague to give a presentation about
> technical writing to a group of college students. He said most of the
> students are Writing or Literature majors who have aspirations to write
> novels, teach literature, join publishing agencies, become book editors,
> etc. For these students, the thought of becoming a "technical writer" seems
> a bit of a sellout to their original literary aspirations.


No, being a sellout in that area would be accepting ANY MONEY AT ALL from a
publisher to get their works to see print. Or writing Harlequin Romances, or
pornography.

People taking a Literature course would be eaten alive in a tech writing
environment.

"... But I was a poetess!!!"

-Wendy



> Rather than
> churning out the great American novel, and thus fulfilling their life's
> purpose, a career in technical writing would lock them into dry procedural
> writing, akin to what they find in their VCR manual. It's like an
> oil-painting artist quitting the canvas and taking up to house painting
> instead.


Or working for the Franklin Mint, or a newspaper, reduced to drawing maps
and laying out advertising. (My friend who is has an art degree wound up
doing that for a newspaper for a while, but she's also retiring at 55, and
at the moment is the editor of several lapidary magazines. Go figure.)


>
> Sure, technical writing is something they could do ... if they were
> starving
> and had no other way to pay the bills.


I. Don't. Think. So. They would be reduced to writing those aforementioned
cheezy romance novels at 15K a pop (yes, I did look into it at one point,
when *I* was starving between my "sellout" gigs), or even printed
pornography, if people bother to read that stuff anymore (ISTR one "famous"
novelist doing a stint at that way back when).

For every Stephen King and JK Rowling, there are tens of thousands of
"novelists" needing actual day jobs to pay the rent and feed themselves. The
top 10% of novelists make more than 15K/year from their writing. Which means
than 90% of them are making LESS than that. (My figures are a few years out
of date, so they could be adjusted upwards for inflation). When my Creative
Writing professor came to me after I had finished his class, asking me to
write him a recommendation so he could get a grant for a few grand to make
it through the summer, I realized that 'creative writing' wasn't going to
pay the bills (but I suppose I had already "sold out" by pursuing an
engineering degree rather than a BA).

Of course, it's worse in the music business...

-Wendy (independent musician and technical writer)
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