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Let's not get fussy about titles. There are all kinds
of technical writing. The one time I got to work from
home for a summer, I was writing procedures for
Customer Service, Billing, and delivery service.
I did all the research and interviews at the office or
in special off-site sessions (long story), but all of
the writing at home. And it was all real writing, not
just re-writing--ok, except for a couple of documents
whose information had to be included. Nothing about
the assignment had much to do with technology. It was
mainly policy and procedures. But that's still
classed as tech writing.
Nonetheless, there's still no way to do that
completely off-site. There may be jobs out there that
you could do completely from home, but if so, I think
I'd be perfectly content to trade my tech writer
moniker for something less lofty. Who cares what it's
called, if the money is good? I'm just happy if,
during a crunch, I'm allowed to stop wasting time
driving to the office just to spend the day head down
in the writing all day. I work longer hours if I don't
have to get up and go home in the middle of something.
But that's special circumstances. You can't expect to
do that every day.
Maggie Secara
~maybe someone will pay me just to stay home and be
cute? I can do cute.
--- Bill Swallow <wswallow -at- nycap -dot- rr -dot- com> wrote:
>
> It will be almost impossible to learn how to be a
> technical writer by
> working at home. You do not simply re-write what
> info people give you...
> Well, OK, there are tech writers out there who do
> this, but IMO that's being
> a technical secretary and not a technical writer
> (let the fur fly!). To be a
> good tech writer, you first need to be involved in
> what you are writing.
> Being on site and able to go from desk to desk
> interviewing SMEs for info is
> a critical skill. Don't let the thought of working
> on site stop you though,
> as it can be quite a rewarding occupation.
=====
Maggie Secara
Note: This post may contain misspellings, grammatical errors, disorganized sentence structure, or may entirely lack a coherent theme. These elements are natural to the process of writing, and will only add to the overall beauty of the post.
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