atw: Re: Technical Writing for Retirees!
- From: Stuart Burnfield <slb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2007 19:34:05 +0900
Hi Martin -
Go for it. You're not too old, it sounds as though you have realistic
expectations, you can write, you've shown you can master technical
subject matter, and 35 years of maths/science teaching suggests that you
enjoy communicating technical concepts and procedures.
Tech writing, like most occupations, can be demanding, but it is
certainly not "extraordinarily demanding". I don't know of anyone who's
been "destroyed by the level of brain stress".
It's true that some people view a TW as a sort of eccentric typist, but
as long as you have your own opinion of your worth you don't need to be
too worried about other people's.
Quite often TW and training contracts are bundled together--write the
manual, prepare the course, present the course. It seems to me you would
have a head start on this sort of work.
Science communication is another field you could look at. There are uni
courses in it. I know Biotechnology Australia advertised on this list
last year for a tech writer to help rewrite a lot of their web content.
There must be other organisations with science-related content on their
web sites that needs updating.
You can obviously write, but there's more to tech writing than knowing a
bit about the subject matter and being able to write. (Just as, I
expect, there's more to being a physics teacher than knowing the physics
and being able to speak.) You should probably read a couple of books to
get you started. These are a couple I recommend:
User and Task Analysis for Interface Design, by Hackos and Redish
Read Me First! A Style Guide for the Computer Industry, by Sun Technical
Pubs
These will give the foundations for learning about TW. Anything else you
might need to know for a particular job (such as indexing, MS Word,
Framemaker, technical illustration, software development, writing online
help, writing for the web) you can scrounge for on the web or get a
specific book. Ask here for recommendations.
Good luck
Stuart
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