I'm with Craig Hadden on this one... There are always factors of documentation that you can attend to, pretty much prepping yourself for the smallish window of time you might have to use the product you are documenting. there is also the factor that with time, a good tech writer will become familiar with generalised functionality of products and tools. there are certain things that you can map out (like Creating an X, Changing an X, Deleting an X), which you can with some certainty assume (yeah we all know about "assume"!) that enables you to get certain amounts of grunt writing work done in a vacuum. IMHO---Ultimately, anyone who asks you to document a product that is not yet in existence, or is unavailable to the writer might need a check up from the neck up if they think the doco is going to be worth more than window dressing. Luck with your course Joe Z > Craig Hadden <CraigH@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Maray (Sherwood) wrote: > > Sometimes ...you are not seeing or doing what you are writing > about... > > How do [you] overcome this ...? > > Maray, my take on this would be that you can write some parts of the > documentation (e.g. conceptual topics like "What is a widget?") > without > access to what you're writing about. But you might not be able to > write > procedures accurately, particularly if your audience has little > knowledge > (and therefore the steps need to be very detailed). > > So, you could structure your time to write and/or check the detailed > procedures while you have access, and write other content when you > don't. > > Hope that helps, > Craig > > ************************************************** > To post a message to austechwriter, send the message to > austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx > > To subscribe to austechwriter, send a message to > austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "subscribe" in the Subject > field. > > To unsubscribe, send a message to austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx > with "unsubscribe" in the Subject field. > > To search the austechwriter archives, go to > www.freelists.org/archives/austechwriter > > To contact the list administrator, send a message to > austechwriter-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx > ************************************************** ************************************************** To post a message to austechwriter, send the message to austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx To subscribe to austechwriter, send a message to austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "subscribe" in the Subject field. To unsubscribe, send a message to austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe" in the Subject field. To search the austechwriter archives, go to www.freelists.org/archives/austechwriter To contact the list administrator, send a message to austechwriter-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx **************************************************