Renewed Spirit

I met briefly with my manager this morning. She wanted to clarify that the user guide I've been working on is a process with iterations. It went out to my peers to review yesterday. As they began making comments about the content I had written, she wanted to reinforce the fact that none of the comments were unprofessional. In fact, one peer noted "I really, really like the look-and-feel of this user guide. I think it's a big step in the right direction for us. And since Paul has done much of the heavy lifting already, we have the luxury of focusing on fine-tuning the material." 

It confirmed that I am working for the best manager I've ever worked for in my 19+ years as a technical writer. I've been working on the user guide for several weeks and it has tested my patience. What I had considered to be a simple user guide for a fairly simple system has blossomed into a larger task. This project is being used as a means to decide how we, as a department, are going to bring our documentation 'up' a level. What that means is that our user guides are no longer going to state the obvious. We're not going to write "Click Submit to submit the [whatever]" or "Click Add to add a record."

I'll admit that I have been impatient during this project. I have questioned my skills and abilities as a professional as I've been challenged. When I think about all of the documentation I've written over the years, the content of all of that documentation has been writing the obvious, as I mentioned above. If all of the obvious content was removed, a lot of the documentation I've written would be much smaller as far as page count, perhaps as much as 50% less.

I walked out of our meeting with a renewed vigor and perhaps a sharper focus on the project. I am having a good day!