Erik Porter's Blog

I had mentioned previously about being an “official” author in print now earlier.  Thanks everyone for their congratulations.  Roy had a good suggestion I should've thought of...which is talking about my first time experience with writing.  Well, after going through a bit of it, I have to say I have more respect for those who do it.  It's not the easiest thing in the world.  However, that's one of the reasons I'm getting into it.  I enjoy coding very much, but sometimes it's great to take a break for a few reasons.

1. It's just nice variety from coding all day and all night.  Helps keep my mind clear and focused.
2. I enjoy a challenge.
3. It helps keep my skills tuned.  When you write, you really have to know what you're talking about, because someone out there knows just as much as you do and more.  Plus, teaching someone else what you already know helps ingrain it in your brain as well as keep you on your toes.
4. I get a lot of satisfaction out of knowing that I helped someone learn something (assuming I didn't do too bad of a job  :P)

I had a nice talk with a fellow at Microsoft about writing and how there are really a few different kinds of technical writers (Scott Mitchell has also talked about this and it's very true).  There are those that are naturally good writers that later on take on some coding.  Then there are coders that later on take on writing.  There is even a third group of people who are just fantastic at both.  There are many of these people in the Microsoft community (too many to name names).  I am definitely a coder that has come into writing.  Both sides of the fence have a problem.  We aren't experts at both ends of the rope.  The people that are, well, I really look up to them and use them as goals for myself.

I have now written 3 articles (working on a 4th, 3rd will be published soon [on ASP.NET Templating and Skinning]) and two chapters for a book.  All of them were unique experiences.  My first article I wrote, I “thought” would be the simplest.  It was on switching from Access to MSDE.  Simple concept, but so many details I was unaware of beforehand.  At this time I should also point out that editors are the greatest.  They may seem a bit mean and pushy and want you to change too much of your work, but it's well worth it in the end.  I think I was off and on editing that article for at least a month!

Next, I moved on to technical editing for Duncan's book, which was great.  Duncan's a great author so he was pretty easy to edit for technical accuracy so it acted as a great intro to tech editing.  If you ever get a chance, it's a great way to start.  You get to see the process of writing without actually doing any of it.

After that I was offered to write the ADO.NET and DataBinding Chapters.  It was a humbling experience, yet a great one.  Number One lesson I learned was that it's important to span your time out when writing large amounts.  I made the mistake of putting off my two chapters (both were supposed to be 30 pages or more) until about 6 days before they were due.  BIG MISTAKE!  I wrote solid every evening until the sun rose up and then some.  Most experience writers probably wouldn't have needed to take that long, but I was still new, so I did.  Again, use your time wisely.  That goes for just about everything I guess.  I'm just a horrible procrastinator, but I will say it's because I was an independent consultant at the time.  Now that I have a full time job, time management is a lot easier.

After that I wrote two more articles (Creating Strongly Typed Collections and ASP.NET Templating and Skinning for Advisor magazine), which were suprisingly easy.  I think I wrote each of them (about 2000 words) in about the same time (4 hours each).  This seemed really strange to me since all my other writing had taken soooo long.  That is the great thing about writing though:  Variety.  I get to write about all the things I love in .NET and share it with others.  Sometimes the articles are hard, sometimes they're easy.

I'm writing my 4th article write now on What's New in Whidbey, for all your Advisor readers out there  ;)  One of the things I find most challenging and the most fun is trying to come up with something that hasn't been written before, at least not in the same way.  I can't say I've done very well at that yet, but it's something I'm constantly working on.  There have been a million things about “What's New in Whidbey” already, so this should be a good challenge!  :)

I'd imagine that there are a lot of people like me out there (i.e. Coders that would like to look at doing some writing) and all I can say is...it's tough sometimes.  I find that quite often I know exactly how something works, but I don't know exactly what it works that way.  IMHO, it's hard to BS the readers.  With the resources out there today, people can look things up in an instant, so you have to be extremely accurate and know your stuff.  For Coders turned Writers, this usually isn't the hard part.  The hard part is the writing itself.  Explaining to another person what you already know.  Seems easy, but often times...it isn't!

I hope this ramble has given a little insight to what it's like to do technical writing and wasn't too much of just a flat out ramble  ;)  Let me know if you have any questions...