Stalking the wiley tech writer

[KMcLauchlan -at- chrysalis-its -dot- com]

G'day all.

I doubt there's a functioning technical pubs department 
out there that can spare anybody for this idea, either, 
but... try this...

It seems to me that an enterprising journalism student 
or anthropologist could find material for an article or 
a series or a dissertation, if s/he were to follow a 
writer or a writing project around for a while, and 
record what actually happens.

Having said that, I'm now trying to dispell these 
visions of somebody in a cammo suit, lurking in a 
portable duck-blind, armed with a double-barrelled... 
er... notepad. (Aah... aa-ah... AH-CHOO!... dammit, 
doesn't anybody ever dust these fake plants?)   
Or, perhaps, a-la Agent 38 (you have to be really 
old to get that one), crouched in a filing-cabinet 
or disguised as a water cooler.

The end-result, though, could be "a day in the life of", 
for the company newsletter, or "Stalking the Wiley Tech 
Writer" for the anthro undergrad paper, or ... justification 
to the bosses for how it could possibly take that much 
time to write X pages.

"It's not the writing, it's all that other crap... see? 
Here's the video."

Where's Jane Goodall when we need her?  Tech Writers in 
the Mist.   Gorrillas Among the Keyboards.

Hmm.  Maybe Peter Benchley, instead. 


/kevin