Re: How fast do I need to be able to write?

[Richard Mateosian <xrm -at- EMAIL -dot- MSN -dot- COM>]

>Writer's block barely exists in technical writing, because we
>aren't searching for the perfect metaphor or evoking the proper
>emotion

I often spend a long time looking for the best way to organize the
information.

I don't know how others manage, but I find that I can't write
comfortably about something until I'm pretty close to being an
expert - at least at one level deeper than my audience. To me that
means having the big picture in mind and understanding how the parts
relate to one another.

In a typical situation, I want to understand the users' problems,
what pieces they need to assemble to solve those problems, and the
exact effects the things I tell them to do have on each of those
pieces.

That understanding often takes a long time to acquire, and it is not
a cost-effective approach. If a company has a well thought out
product, someone already has the big picture, and it is cheaper and
faster to assign that person a ghost writer.

Of course, in many cases the person with the big picture has left
the scene or is unable or unwilling to communicate. That's when you
need a professional technical communicator to come in and recreate
the overview. I often find myself in that situation, and it often
leads to what an observer might see as writer's block.  ...RM

Richard Mateosian <srm -at- cyberpass -dot- net>    www.cyberpass.net/~srm/
Review Editor, IEEE Micro                Berkeley, CA

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