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

["Lauren" <lauren -at- writeco -dot- net>]

> From: Tom Johnson

	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. 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. 
	
---------

How ironic.  Wouldn't having a job working in the world and in different
environments give a future writer more fodder for writing than churning out
unpublished novels based on one's experiences with college keg parties and
omphaloskepsis?  Also, writing everyday, even the "boring stuff," like
technical documents, helps writers focus on reader-centered writing rather
than the tangents that waft through someone's mind and may have no relevance
to another person.  

Part of writing is having an experience to write about.  The most exciting
stories are of average, even boring, people who experience something very
unexpected and possibly outrageous, like an Administrative Assistant who
becomes a government spy, or something.  How can a writer even think that it
is possible to write about an average person without fully understanding the
world of "average" people?

Here's the above in rhyme, per Leonard's rule of rhyming,

Work not, write a lot.
Relevance to the reader,
or a literary bleeder?

Real-life experience,
for an author's prescience;
not omphaloskepsis,
like mental sepsis;
is fodder for a writer,
with stories of an exciter.

Perhaps, a career benign,
but proud poverty? asinine.

Lauren


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