Category Archives: advice

by Scott Nesbitt

Breaking free of your comfort zone  Clip to Evernote

explore Falling into a nice little rut. Getting complacent. Finding a comfortable groove. Wrapping yourself in a cloak of familiarity.

Call it what you will, but most of us fall into the comfort of a routine now and then. Yes, the oft-talked-about comfort zone.

There’s nothing wrong with that. But I find that inhabiting the comfort zone can get boring. Actually, worse than boring. You’ve probably felt the same way. The work is easy to do and feels more like typing than actual writing. Or, you feel the need to move into areas other than just pure technical writing.

Lately, I’ve been feeling that I’ve ensconced too snugly in my own comfort zone. As part of something I call Phase 3 (more on this in the coming months) and as part of the New Cruelty, I’ve been experimenting with ways of bursting free of my comfort zone.

You can burst out of yours too. And doing that just might refresh you, your technical writing, and your career.

Curious? Then read on.

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by Scott Nesbitt

Using topic-based writing to pull together any writing project  Clip to Evernote

Pulling it all together I don’t have to tell you that topic-based writing is a very popular idea in the world of technical communication. And with good reason: it can help make writing, managing, and assembling documentation a lot easier.

But you can apply topic-based writing to work outside of our profession.

As you may or may not know, I do quite a bit of freelance writing. And sometimes, I have an idea for a non-fiction writing project, but am only able to chip away at it bit by bit? That sometimes feels like it happens a bit too often.

I also find that with projects like that, I write in bits and pieces — a few sentences or paragraphs here and there — and never get anything finished. I have chunks of writing, but can’t really pull them together.

Yes, that’s where topic-based writing comes into play. It can help you pull together all those chunks of content that you’ve been pecking out into something tangible.

Have I got your attention? Then read on.

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by Scott Nesbitt

Rolling with the punches  Clip to Evernote

No, my hair's not blue ... Ever been stung (professionally) in a way that you thought would never happen to you? It happened to me December, 2010. It was a bit shock, let me tell you.

Take a moment, sit back, and let Uncle Scotty tell you one of his stories:

In November of that year, I started a six-month technical writing contract with a financial firm here in Toronto. The pay, while not the greatest, wasn’t too bad. And having that firm on the client list wouldn’t have hurt either. During the weeks that followed, I got a lot of good feedback about my work and was making good progress on my project.

Then on a Wednesday in early December, 2010 (a month, to the day, from when I started, in case you’re wondering) I got a call from HR. I went to their offices and before the very agitated looking HR person could open her mouth, I said I think I know what this is about. Then, pointing to the envelope on her desk, I further perturbed the poor woman by saying I assume that’s for me …

I, along with 3/5 of the company’s documentation team, was let go then and there. Another department or two had been gutted in the previous day or so, too. But I wasn’t worried. I’d been there before. This was the first time this happened as a contractor, though.

It being December, I knew that there wouldn’t be any longer-term gigs in the offing. Things usually slow down at around that time of year. But by scrambling, I was able to pull together enough short-term work to keep me going for a while.

Here are a few lessons I gleaned from that experience.

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by Scott Nesbitt

Effectively presenting information, no matter what you’re writing  Clip to Evernote

This one comes under the banner of Getting back to basics …

For those of us who do it for a living, writing is a way of paying the bills. But writing is, first and foremost, a method of communication. It’s putting thoughts and ideas and opinions out in the wild. How you do that is as important as what you want to say. If you don’t do the job properly, you’ll quickly lose your audience and your efforts will have been wasted.

How do you do the job properly? Here are a few thoughts.

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by Scott Nesbitt

Writing with bullets, a bit too much?  Clip to Evernote

I have to admit that I find the book Writing in Bullets to be quite valuable and useful. It’s a good guide to writing concisely, and for using bullets effectively. Unfortunately, over the last few years I’ve been seeing bullets used to replace crisp, well-thought-out writing.

And that’s forced me to think about 1) how bullets should be used, 2) how bullets are used, and 3) how I use them when writing.

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by DMN Communications

Creating UA with an artistic eye  Clip to Evernote

By Roger Sharp

Pictures at an exhibition I was at a friend’s house the other day and pointed to something stuck to his refrigerator. It was an invitation to a mutual friend’s birthday party from months ago. The card had a photo of the birthday man sitting in a deck chair sipping a martini. The deck had been made cozy by potted grasses and palms that seemed to surround him. The image was printed in sepia tone.

“I just couldn’t throw it out. It looked too good,” was his excuse for still having it.

And so it is with most people — we appreciate beauty. But more than appreciate it, we look at it longer and remember it better. This principle is also true of user assistance.

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