How does one become a technical writer?

[Madrone]

I'm fairly positive I've seen people mention on DU that they do technical writing before, and DUers seem to collectively have knowledge about damned near everything so I thought it the perfect place to ask.

A woman that's one of our customers is married with 4 children and has been out of the workforce for a decade. She stopped working when they decided to have kids, the husband is, I believe, I psychologist, or a therapist? Something of that nature. Anyway - the husband started having these incredibly severe seizures that debilitated him. He had brain surgery to help relieve the severity of the seizures - and it made one of the types of seizures he was having much better but another kind he has are now worse. He is completely lost and out of it for at least 15 minutes after each one. He lost his job on June 5th. Neuropsych tests have said that he shouldn't be providing counseling without supervision which is possible but almost prohibitively expensive, and he'd (I would think) have to find another job before he could do that anyway. To top it all off, he also recently got diagnosed with Celiac's disease.

ANYWAY - the woman was telling me all this in an email exchange we were having at work and she said she may have to get back into the workforce but the economy sucks, the husband can't be left along that long with the kids, and she's been out of the workforce for 10 years. She mentioned that she has a talent for technical writing and that she would like doing that because she could do it from home, but she's not sure how to get her foot in the door.

Anyone have any advice I can pass along?

[mnhtnbb]

1. Does she have any samples of her technical writing?

She should start with the on-line job services--particularly if there's one for technical jobs in her area.

I know Craigslist has a section for writing/editing job postings.

She may also want to see if there are any classes she could take at a local community college
to spiff up skills or create some current writing samples to use in job hunting.

[Missy Vixen]

2. I have a technical writing certificate

I received from the local community college. Tech writing is a difficult field to break into. She may want to try checking out the Society for Technical Communications; I know they have job listings and may mentor people.

I'm a former secretary. Every job I ever had featured "tech writing", but I didn't know it at the time. She may have more experience than she thinks.

I'm crossing my fingers for her.

[GOPisEvil]

3. You can ask Supernova as well.

I believe that is her line of work. Although she seems to get laid off quite frequently. :(

[Madrone]

4. Kick before bed!

For a nice lady that could really use some help.

:)

[XemaSab]

5. It can be a tough field

My mom's a technical writer/editor, but she really only added the "writer" part after about 20 years of editing other people's stuff. She's also got a PhD in Psychology and an English degree from Berkeley and she's worked in the engineering, energy, finance, and environmental fields. :shrug:

What aspect of technical editing would your friend like to go into?

One thought is that there's work out there for teaching English as a second language online. There's also a lot of work for editing stuff written by foreigners. I have no idea how to get into either of those fields, though. :(

[krispos42]

6. The ability to touch-type

It's how I got my job as one after being hired as a part-time technician. Nobody else in the place could do more than hunt-and-peck! :-)


Combined with being well-read enough to compose decent paragraphs, of course.

[northernlights]

7. she's going to have to get her 'puting skills up-to-date

all the tech writers I know (I used to work in the kissin' cousin field of marcom) are expected to do their own page layout. Pagemaker? I think that's the s/w they used...

[Lyric]

8. Our university has a professional writing and editing concentration

that includes technical writing, scientific writing, business writing, etc. Other than that, I don't know.

[XemaSab]

9. Here's a suggestion:

She can always hang out a shingle on Craigslist.

Offer to edit student papers. Also, if her husband is connected with the local psych school, she could edit dissertations. :shrug: