Re: How I Became a Tech. Writer (my turn)

[Kimberly <JKWilson -at- CONCENTRIC -dot- NET>]

OK. Here's my story. (I've always wanted to tell it.)

I've been a tech writer, on contract, for two years.

I knew (eleven years ago) in high school that I wanted to be a tech writer.
I enjoyed math and science, but was a natural-born writer. I was endowed
with an eye for organization and detail, and enjoyed working with
computers. But at the time there just weren't any technical writing
programs to study (in Tennessee, anyway). I opted for engineering in
college. It didn't take me long to discover that, though I loved my English
and liberal arts classes, I hated engineering, so I dropped out after only
a year.

I started working in the hospitality industry, and in a year or so I was
working in tech support for the mainframe databases of a large airline.
After a couple years of this, I was promoted to department subject matter
expert. At that time I *made a conscious decision* to start doing more
writing in my work, and preparing myself as best I could to break into the
field of tech writing.

So I massaged my tech support responsibilities, and soon my workday was
occupied 70 percent by writing. I volunteered for every writing-related
project we had, and took the initiative to create my own projects. I wrote
internal documentation for my department (none had ever been written down
before), formulated procedures and implementation processes, wrote
emergency contingency studies and annual departmental business reports,
reviewed application specs and wrote user documentation for them, wrote
monitoring scripts to output daily reports, and I conducted several peer
and end-user training classes, after preparing my own material. I even
traveled to England to conduct a two-week training course for our
complementary support team in the UK.

I also developed my skills during my personal time. I became familiar with
the most common Windows office applications. I volunteered to edit (and
produce) a newsletter for a tiny non-profit organization, then added a
second, larger newsletter after a year. I read magazines and web sites to
learn more about newer technologies, learned a bit about traditional
typesetting and pre-press, and I taught myself HTML.

After two years of this type of writing and learning, on the job and in my
personal time, I left the company and took my first job as a contract tech
writer. (Ironically, my first assignment was writing documentation for a
competitor airline.)

My years in the tech support field really helped me tune my "explaining"
skills, while my exposure to computer technology from the inside prepared
me for the software development field. Today, I generally work in software
development teams, where I concentrate my writing on preparing end-user
guides and project management documentation.

I love my work, I made a great decision, and I plan to be in the field for
a good many years.

Kimberly Lyle-Wilson
Atlanta GA


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