The Writing Jobs

A lot of bloggers read blogs, but there are also some very valuable books out there on blogging. The three books that I recommend for bloggers are Blog! by David Kline and Dan Burstein, The Corporate Blogging Book by Debbie Weil, and Naked Conversations by Shel Israel and Robert Scoble.

1. Blog!: How the newest revolution is changing politics, business and culture by David Kline and Dan Burstein.

This book talks of the power and influence of blogs. It uses political examples. Through these examples we can learn what good blogging is (honest, open) and what it is not (poorly written, blatant marketing). It talks about freedom of the press and countries and companies that try to suppress blogs. It also warns and gives examples of blogs that share insider or confidential information and what happens.

To quote from it: “most people or at least most of the media’s coverage of business issues in blogging are missing the fact that the real excitement here is not how much money business can make from blogging, but how dramatically blogging will reshape the world of business from top to bottom and create new sources of competitive advantage for firms that learn how to use this new medium intelligently… Bloggers not only tend to be more passionate about their interests and hobbies than other people, they also have marketplace influence far beyond their numbers.”

This is a highly inspirational read for anyone who blogs. We live in revolutionary times and as bloggers (and blog readers) we see history being made. We are truly cutting edge. The world is changing before our eyes.

You're a non-writer who has just been assigned to write the User Documentation for your company's new product.  Your overwhelming emotion is fear, perhaps with some anger.

With any new activity there will be some anxiety.  Writing may have added anxiety because of your writing experience while you were a student. 

Writing User Documentation is not like the writing that you had to do in school.  Those activities were filled with anxiety and "writer's block."  In this article you will see how to overcome your writing anxieties so you can write a good User Document.

What You're Not Writing

All writing and writing situations are not the same.  Let's differentiate writing a User Document from other types of writing and writing situations.

The Incident

During a recent vacation trip when I was asked, “What do you do?” I casually answered, “I’m a food writer.”

“What’s a food writer?” the gentleman responded.

Not thinking for even a moment, I blurted out the obvious, “A food writer is a person who writes about food.” Reflecting a moment, I recovered adding more information on the kinds of articles I’d written and for what magazines. But later the episode gave me pause to stop and think of just how I could answer that question in the future. After all, how would you answer that question right now?

So what exactly, is a food writer? Well essentially, there are three aspects to the response, “A food writer is a person who writes about food.” They are: