Lately, I don't really think about "technical writing" as an industry nearly as much as in days past. I can cite the reality that, in 2023, I didn't create a post with the "Technical Writing" label until Tuesday, March 14, 2023, and that post was simply a link to elsewhere - https://prhmusic.blogspot.com/2023/03/blog-post.html - with zero words written by me. I'm unsure why this is the case as I still go to work and when I arrive, I am a Senior Technical Writer - that is still my title and that is still my role. Maybe that is why the article below made me revisit this idea that I have had in my head for quite a while, which is to explain that yes, my title and role is that of a Senior Technical Writer, but no, I do not do the work of a traditional Senior Technical Writer. I consider the traditional role of a Senior Technical Writer to be the role of learning a subject area to the degree that documentation about that subject area can be written. I don't do that. I consider myself to be more of a Documentation Assembler. For the 3 major projects with which I am involved, I rely on other co-workers to write documentation and then, in some instances, I may proofread the content, but in 90% of the work I do, I don't even proofread or edit the content. Literally, I assemble the work of others into a cohesive presentation of the content that is then distributed. That statement is true for
- The Disaster Recovery documentation project
- The Knowledge Management project
- The Operations Manual project
I'm not complaining as the way I do my work is aligned with what I like to do. I like to write DOS batch files in a folder with
81126 File(s) 43,575,880,874 bytes
7655 Dir(s) 349,230,120,960 bytes free
and eliminate a bunch of files until there are only 8379 files with only the following file types:
*.mp4, *.docx, *.doc, *.zip, *.xps, *.xml, *.xltx, *.xlsx, *.xlsm, *.xls, *.vss, *.vsdx, *.vsdm, *.vsd, *.vdx, *.txt, *.pub, *.pptx, *.ppt, *.png, *.pdf, *.onetoc2, *.one, *.msg, *.jpg, *.jpeg, *.csv
I doubt many Senior Technical Writers are like me.
In any case, read the following article about how Technical Writers are the unsung heroes of customer experience.
https://thecontentwrangler.substack.com/p/technical-writers-the-unsung-heroes-bae?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1587018&post_id=135611902&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email - Technical Writers: The Unsung Heroes of Customer Experience
