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Subject:RE: Description of Tech Writers (fwd) From:"Gary S. Callison" <huey -at- interaccess -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Sat, 07 Dec 2002 13:33:37 -0600 (CST)
I'm a technical writer in Washington DC. I work in a nondescript building
in an unlabeled office park, and spend exactly nine hours and five minutes
every day in a drab cubicle, typing out my tediously dull MIL-STD-498
documents at exactly 88 words per minute.
On my breaks, I walk down five flights of stairs to have a cigarette, and
dream. I have two dreams. The first is a system to make the current
project work better. This dream is destined to remain unrealized. The
second dream is to write a bestselling hard science-fiction novel where
the hero destroys the evil galactic bureaucracy.
I then return to my drab cubicle and continue typing the most recent
episode of my magnum opus "The Continuing Saga of DI-IPSC-81433", where
our hero defeats his arch-enemies, the evil twins DI-MCCR-80025A and
DI-MCCR-80301, all while remaining Section 508 compliant.
The tedious crap I write is entirely ignored by my target audience, a
dozen-odd similarly dull quasi-governmental flunkies sitting in similarly
dull cubicles. ...unless I make a mistake. Then, twelve US Marines die
and dozens more are injured in an accident, and after a
several-million-dollar congressional investigation, I am forced to
resign, lose my house, get divorced (~again~) and wind up back in Chicago,
living in an alcohol-fueled depression in a friend's basement and driving
a truck for a living.
--
Huey (this would be funnier if it wasn't true) Callison
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