Where to start with Technical Writing?

I'm just discovering this and it seems like a good thing to go into. I am a Creative Writing major and i heard that it can help with the art of Technical Writing. The only thing is I'm not exactly sure where to start. I mean I don't have my degree in Creative Writing just yet (I'm a Junior) but i would like to go ahead and start getting in some experience. Where should I start? Is there a website where i can search places needing technical writers? I'm not looking into Tradition Technical Writing but more into Education or Marketing. And even so is it even possible to get a job doing Technical Writing without much experience or before graduating or should i just go ahead and gain experience with freelance? And what is Framework?

While in school, you should take at least one course in technical writing so you can become familiar with the methodology and see if you like it. Framework is a word processing program that is used by many technical writers. Google Framwork for more info. See JamesGraves.com

I've never heard of Framework, but maybe you mean Framemaker? That's Adobe's structured document software. Other common tools are RoboHelp and Madcap Flare (for online help), authorIT, and Web Works ePublisher. Framemaker and either RoboHelp or Flare are probably the most useful to learn. If you want to get into education or marketing, specifically, you may want to familiarize yourself with Adobe Captivate or Techsmith's Camtasia, which are both video screen capture software.

If you can take a tech writing course, do that definitely. Journalism courses can be useful too, as you spend a lot of time interviewing subject matter experts. I studied journalism and anthropology and have found both to be helpful in my career (I've been a tech writer for 10 years).

Good luck!

Gerald: As Aspanier says, you probably meant Framemaker which is a word processor program. The Microsoft .NET Framework version 2.0 (x86) redistributable package installs the .NET Framework runtime and associated files required to run applications developed to target the .NET Framework v2.0.

I would say that most important is that you take a course in technical writing so you can learn the methodology. The tools can come at anytime but you should at least be familiar with Microsoft Word. Good information can be found at JamesGraves.com

Hi there!

Entering technical writing---probably more conventional, mauscripts, manuals and I am open to the web but I feel I have a lot to learn. I took technical writing and did my report on Weblogs three years ago. Ya, that took off since then.

Every company that publishes has at least some of their material on-line. Seems like there's a lot of work out there, any comments?

Alexis

Hi there!

Entering technical writing---probably more conventional, mauscripts, manuals and I am open to the web but I feel I have a lot to learn. I took technical writing and did my report on Weblogs three years ago. Ya, that took off since then.

Every company that publishes has at least some of their material on-line. Seems like there's a lot of work out there, any comments?

Alexis

If you're really interested in technical writing, understand that creative writing will not prepare you for the field. It's a very different process (although I find it very creative in it's own way).

As most people who are good at it will tell you, if you do it for the love of writing, you're in the wrong field. It's about helping people get practical, re-usable information quickly. Think less about "tech" and more about "content" for a diverse audience (from end users and consumers to experts).

An exceptional tech writer will have hard skills that apply to a web-enabled world (at least a firm grasp of markup languages like XML, HTML, structured information models like DITA, and CSS). Do learn some authoring tools and know the hardest part of learning them is knowing the concepts behind them.

Make sure you understand the concepts of single sourcing, usability, localization, portability and principals of process development and change management (even ADDIE). Take courses in technical writing, critical analysis, journalism and business writing if available. And don't overlook critical analysis as a fundamental skill.

Most of us in the field came to technical writing through a completely different discipline, we're just focused on communicating complex ideas to others in a practical way.