RE: On not becoming discouraged

["Lisa Wright" <liwright -at- earthlink -dot- net>]

Ellen,
I've read lots of your posts in the last couple months. You seem to be
very concerned about getting the one right answer, not only for the
problem at hand, but for *everything*. There's absolutely nothing wrong
with doing things the right way, and you are to be commended for wanting
to learn. But there's probably one thing that's more important to learn
about technical writing than any other single thing: there is very
rarely one right way to do things. A single day subscribed to this site
will teach you that. Find the best thing (tool, style, format, whatever)
for your situation. Make a decision and move on.

The second thing to learn is that technical writing is a hugely diverse
field and there are a huge number of skills, tools, and technologies. It
is not humanly possible for you to know all of them. I'm guessing that
you've forgotten the particulars of HTML and CSS because you don't need
them right now. You haven't used them in awhile and your brain is busy
with other things. When you need them, you'll pick it up again. Same
with Frame/Word. You're suddenly having to deal with both again and it's
scaring you because you can't remember all of Word's tricks. But you
will when you play with it a bit.

What about all those other things? I'm not trying to sound flip, but so
what? Let's take single-sourcing. Do you understand what it is? Great.
You're ahead of a lot of people. That's a good reason to read threads
that don't immediately concern you. But don't get bogged down in the
details until you need to. And then when you need to, think seriously
about what is right for your situation, then make a decision, and don't
be thrown because something is the hot new thing and somebody in your
office is all "het" up about it.

Worrying about what's coming up prevents you from focusing on what's
happening right now. Why learn RoboHelp? It's just another tool. You
know ForeHelp. You can pick up RoboHelp in no time. Understand what
makes the help systems (not the HATs!) tick. You need a this, that, and
the other, and boom you've got yourself a help system. (See, I can't
remember either because I haven't needed it in awhile. But if I need it
again, I'll learn it again.) You can learn a HAT in a heartbeat. You
know the flavor you need to know *right now,* and that is the only thing
that matters. Keep up with conceptual issues so you're familiar with
what's going on in the industry, but leave the details. When you have to
have the details, start researching. This list, SoftPro and Amazon, the
web. Research.

The real answer to your question, "how do you all do and learn it all,"
is simply that most of us don't. And we're fine. The reason it seems
like we do is that you come to this list and you almost inevitably get
an answer. Just remember that it's not always from the same person (even
Geoff--he's usually telling you how to think about your problem, not how
to solve it).

Don't give up. Just let go a little. You're doing fine.

Lisa


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