Technical Writers, Screen Writers And Financial Writers

There are some people who take delight in disparaging technical writing as a job and technical communications as a field for being “boring” and “redundant.”
“Who spends a Saturday night reading user manuals?” they quip. Well, you’d be surprised… I’ve spent “quite a few hours” in my spare time just reading and examining manuals and dreaming of ways to improve them.
I enjoy thinking about better ways to organize information all day long and that’s why technical writing has never been “boring” for me. Even when I watch an NFL football game, I marvel at the way they mark the field with those virtual 10-yard lines and enjoy every new information graphics they splash on the screen to help us fans understand and appreciate the game better. I try to image what a magnificent technical document it must be, the one explaining all the rules and penalties of the game? In my mind’s eye, every coach with a clipboard that has all the plays and moves sketched out in beautiful diagrams and procedural steps is a technical writer, or employs one.
Why single out technical writing for being “boring” or “redundant” etc.? Are other information products that we’re surrounded with always “exciting” or “useful”?
Do we all love every movie we watch? Of course not. So do we condemn the whole movie industry and conclude that all screen writers, directors and producers are wasting their time? No. We rationally conclude that THAT particular film was a bad one and order a new DVD for our pleasure. Similarly, a particularly bad sample of technical documentation does not mean that documentation is inherently “nonsense” or worse.
How about finance? Didn’t we get into the Mother of All Economic Disasters in 2008 thanks to a lot of well-trained “financial professionals” and “financial writers”? So do we condemn the finance profession wholesale? Of course not. We need them just like we need money to circulate to get the economy going. But “bad apples” – sure, they must be eliminated for the sake of the good ones still serving the public honorably, to the best of their capabilities.
There are boring and bad technical writers in this world just like there are boring and bad movie directors and boring and bad financial advisers. And neither of these occupations is for anyone and everyone. You really have to love the essence of these disciplines to enjoy their challenges and produce superlative work. As a technical communicator with 20 years of experience in the industry I wouldn’t have it any other way.