I don’t, but I’ve been either unemployed or only part-time employed for about a year now. So I think getting a full-time job of any sort and holding it for some time would be good for the resume and income situation.
Yup, I am studying up hard early so I can try to stretch out that firehose-drinking time to longer than 2 weeks and hence reduce the flow rate, so to speak.
Thanks for that. This is not an easy one to answer, but I’ll try to help.
First of all, I wouldn’t worry about the “marketing technical writer” bit. In my experience, tech companies often don’t know where to put technical writers, especially if they’re hiring their first one. Tech writers aren’t engineers, most of the time, but they do understand technology in a general sense, and they work closely with engineers while being creative. They often have arts degrees to boot. So let’s put them with the other creative people who have arts degrees in Marketing, though they’ll never draft a brochure or a press release, or staff the booth at a trade show. It’s handy if you can do any or all of the above, but it probably won’t be expected of you.
Next, look into courses. I taught tech writing for years at a community college, and had many students much like you–they were working as new tech writers, and had little idea of what they were doing, but they wanted to learn. Our courses were night classes, so you could get in a full day of work, then go to class. Be prepared to start from the basics–the first course in our program, which was a prerequisite to all the other courses, was primarily a grammar and punctuation refresher, with an introduction to writing instructions and procedures, which was vital for the other courses. Actually, I’m going to page @Sunspace here, because I know he’s taken such a course.
In addition, acquaint yourself with the basics of layout and design. This is important, whether you’re working for paper documentation or some sort of online doc. You’ll have to establish some sort of recognizable and consistent look to the documentation. The design of every book, the look of every page and every help file, and so on, must maintain a consistent look, so that anybody can tell that this is a product of XYZ Tech Corporation. College night courses are available for these too, and I took a few. (I loved the course on typography!)
Select a good style guide, and add/change it as the situation demands. IBM, for whom I did some work, was famous in our circles for demanding we all use the Chicago Manual while also publishing a book with the exceptions to the rules in the Chicago Manual. At any rate, you’re going to have engineers forwarding you documents where the thing you look at when you work is called a “screen,” a “monitor,” a “display,” and in the very old days, I’d sometimes get a document referring to a “CRT” (Cathode Ray Tube). You need to pick one term, put it in your in-house additions/exceptions style guide and stick to it, no matter how much engineer Fred says it should be “monitor” and engineer Ginger says it should be “display.”
As an aside, to this day, I still use the Chicago Manual for all kinds of writing; and while I have others, I prefer Chicago. It’s a great resource.
Lastly (for now), I’d recommend that you get in touch with the Society for Technical Communication. They’re a professional organization, and while membership is not required, it is highly beneficial, as they have a number of resources, and can put you in touch with things or people that can help you. I was a member for years, and they were very helpful. See their website here:
Not sure what else I can add without drilling down into minutiae, so let’s keep things general for now. I hope this helps, and of course, I’d be happy to address any questions or comments that you may have. Hey, it’s a great career. Welcome it!
Much thanks! I’ll be re-reading this post a lot. I have checked out STC before, I had been looking into getting the STC CPTC-1 and CPTC-2 certificates.
What luxury, to develop an in-house style guide from the ground up!
Part of what I do these days involves editing academic stuff for publication, which means dealing with dozens of little fiefdoms all with their own peculiarities for no good reason.
If I had to choose between world peace and forcing every journal to conform to a single style guide, it’d be a tough call…
To the OP, the best piece of professional editing advice I have is to establish your expertise early, politely, and concretely. Make an engineer’s eyes glaze over with your own firehose of information about stylistic conventions and pluperfect subjunctives, and he’ll never question you again about your grammar choices.
I’d rather deal with a terrible writer who respects my craft than a decent one who thinks they’re hot shit.
When it gets rough, think about how fortunate you are to have a job that pays well and allows you to stay home, and then think about losing all of that if you don’t tackle that challenge. That will motivate you to double your efforts to succeed! 