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| New Technical Writer: Have No Fear of Writing |
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| Written by Barry Millman, Ph.D. | |
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Dealing with Reviews of Your WritingYou will have each component reviewed by others on the product project. Consider their suggestions and criticisms of your writing. However try to leave your ego out of the equation. If a reviewer says "you got this wrong," you should hear "this is incorrect." Ask what is incorrect, and get the correct information. Correct the inaccuracies. Don't be defensive. If you can overcome your fear of criticism, you will be able to write more and write better. This fear will diminish as you produce (and have reviewed) each of the components. Learn as much as you can about the product, its environment, and Users. If you are expected to be an expert and are not one, then use the excuse for any naive questions you may ask: "I am just simulating our product's Users with this question." (Use this technique sparingly.) Two More PointsNobody writes the perfect User Document. Don't strive for perfection. Doing so will prevent you from getting anything done. Read. Read all sorts of published materials, especially other User Documents (especially for products similar to the one you are writing about). Learn from that writing. Be critical of it from the USER's point of view. First Things to DoLearn as much as you can about the product that you have to write about, its users, and the product's environment, before you ask questions (other than where to get information). Please see my article on the First Things To Do. ResourcesBarry Millman, Ph.D., has a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering (1966, Carnegie Institute of Technology) and an M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Psychology (Human Information Processing, University of Calgary). He has been a consultant for over 25 years, an instructor, course developer, and award-winning speaker. For the past seven years he has been researching and creating resources to help organizations create great User Documents. Visit: http://www.greatuserdocs.com/ for resources to help you create the User Documents that your Product needs and your Users deserve. Visit http://www.greatuserdocs.com/ReadingRoom.htm for more articles like this one. You may copy and distribute this article freely. However you must keep the entire article and Resources sections intact, with no changes, additions, or deletions. Copyright © 2007, Igetitnow! Training, Inc. www.igetitnow.com |
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