Nolan Mott has been a technical writer for three years. He has quite a bit of experience contracting, but recently accepted a full-time, permanent position at a software company in Sunnyvale.
Nolan cited flexibility, ability to take time off, opportunity to screen potential employers, and the chance to make good money as positive aspects of contracting. He went on to say that security, the opportunity to build relationships, and the ability to effect positive change in a company are among the positive aspects of working as a staff member.
Before Nolan became a technical writer he worked with a staff of writers as a sort of coordinator, making sure that the correct clients received software patches and release notes, etc. As deadlines piled up, Nolan was asked to help out by writing some of the release notes and other documents. Eventually he became a full-time writer. He says that he learned most of the necessary skills on his own. His educational background was in aviation so he did not have formal training for writing except for a couple of general business writing courses.
When asked what he likes most about the work he does Nolan had several examples to share. He talked about the satisfaction of developing a tool that would assist users, the challenge of taking technical information and transforming it into an understandable and useable format for the intended audience, and the pride that a writer can feel when he or she has succeeded in making the product better by contributing good documentation.
One of the things that Nolan likes least about technical writing is the occasional difficulty when attempting to gather needed information, for example, when engineers cannot or will not make time to talk with him about a product. His solution to this problem is to be persistent and to remain relaxed about the things that he can’t control.
Interviewing developers and working directly with products are the two main sources that Nolan uses to gather material for writing. He stressed that working with a product, exploring what it can do, and performing the procedures that he will write about are his main sources of information gathering. Working directly with a product counts for at least 70 percent of his research.
According to Nolan, the three most important skills that a would-be technical writer needs to possess are 1. communication skills, both written and verbal, 2. organization skills, and 3. persistence. Nolan recommends that writers who want to advance in the field should have a desire to advance, the drive to learn new documentation tools and procedures, and an open minded approach to the technological and style changes that are always a part of the field
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