blog @ spacebarpress » Writing

Coming Face-to-Face With My Audience

Julia — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 14:39:03 +0000

Last night I was visiting a friend who’s husband also works for my employer. After dinner I noticed that he was getting ready to go out and he said it’s because he had to supervise the release of a new version of software that the company was doing. I asked him about it and was surprised when he told me the name, because it turns out that it was something that my team had written about! I didn’t think that his team would also use our documents as typically only the infrastructure support team did (they’re our main audience), but he said that his team uses the documents to confirm the work they’re doing. Just like I use design documents and functional specifications to work on my documents, HE adds the operational documentation I create/maintain to that list and uses them all when he’s working on an implementation.

I wouldn’t have thought that our documents would be used that way, at least not at this company, but it is. And that’s pretty cool.

Adding Some New Skills to My Arsenal

Julia — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:00:09 +0000

With the impending arrival of spring, okay, it’s not really impending, but with our transition into the month of March which is closer to the arrival of spring, I decided it was time to do some career improvement. I’ve been thinking of officially taking some editing courses over the last several months, as that’s something that I’ve been interested in for a while. I recently had my performance review at work as well, and my boss reminded me that our department has a training budget we can use. My courses aren’t that expensive, around $270 each, plus textbooks, so I figured I would be able to get my company to pay for it. And sure enough, my boss said “no problem”. Sweet!

First course up is a grammar course for editors and writers. I took a grammar course about 10 years ago as part of my technical writing certificate, so I was hoping to get an extension, however that was denied. No big deal as I’m a bit of a grammar nut anyways, so I figured it would be kind of fun. Although I am anxious to get started into the editing classes themselves, I’ve got to get this grammar course out of the way first.

So for 14 consecutive Tuesdays, I will be out and about learning more about clauses, verb tenses and parts of speech. Excellent.

Starting off the New Year Right

Julia — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 14:06:53 +0000

Yes, it’s a new year, and time to get things started off right. I’ve talked and tweeted about getting off my duff and getting back to my writing, so I’ve decided that I should start it off now. I’m taking advantage of the new year and am going to start getting back into the swing of things. Normally I don’t make resolutions as I find them a tad hard to stick to, but I figure I’ll start off small so that I’ll actually manage to do it. So, I have resolved to

post twice a week.

That’s it for now, just post here twice a week. As most writing “coaches” will tell you, it’s important to get back into the habit of writing, so that’s what I’m going to do. Create the habit and get back to it. Hopefully each month I’ll be able to add something else to this, like post three times a week, read the freelance writing job boards once a week, then twice a week, and so on. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to snowball this whole thing and get moving on it! The full time job has been pretty good lately, so I haven’t been as keen on getting the freelancing work started, but after being off for the last week and a half for the holidays, I was reminded of how much I enjoy being at home and doing things at my own pace.

So here I am, making the commitment to you and the universe, and myself (most importantly), that I will write.

That is all. (for now)

Finding the Inspiration

Julia — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:00:34 +0000

People often ask me where I get my writing ideas, and because I’ve been a writer most of my life (official, technical, or otherwise), I haven’t actually thought about it too much. I’m forever composing short stories, blog posts and articles in my head, or at least coming up with the ideas for all those things as I go through my daily life.

– Waiting for an elevator, sitting on the subway on my way to the office, as I go for a walk in the park –

These are the times that I use to think of ideas for writing projects. Of course this is not where my obstacles lie. I’m definitely an ideas gal.

My issues lie in the fact that I often don’t have an outlet for these ideas. By outlet I mean somewhere to post / publish / send my ideas. I would spend time in actually writing these things up, but since I don’t have any end goal for them, I often don’t even bother.

Further extrapolating this idea, I’ve been trying to push the boundaries of the types of writing that I do. While I enjoy technical writing, and producing documents that people find helpful, I’m always looking to flex my writing muscles and work on other topics and project types. That’s why in my Services page, I talk about the technical writing projects alongside my article writing, my editing services and more. Most freelancers will talk about how you need to pick a niche and write about it and stick to it, but at this point I’m thinking I need to cast a wider net to drum up initial business.

Now it’s time to take the ideas from thought to action.

Time for Some Action

Julia — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 15:36:55 +0000

I’ve been talking about it for a while now, but I’ve finally gotten off my duff and back to some freelancing work! I’ve updated my freelance site (spacebarpress.com, in case you were wondering), and I cleaned up my job site list. Today I’m about to dive back into things by hunting around the job sites and start applying for some freelance jobs. Just little projects at first, as I am still working full-time, but projects nonetheless.

I’ve since decided that I’m not going to be participating in Nanowrimo this year, as I’m just not feeling inspired. Plus, as a published friend of mine commented, “I only write when there’s either an editor or a paycheque at the end of the day.” Okay, so that doesn’t really foster the whole “let’s write for the sake of writing”, but I think it’s a good point to make to me, at least, since at this point in time I need a bit more motivation than just the idea of finishing a story, you know?

So like the woman in the picture here, I’m getting off my duff today and starting the marathon. I’ve got the running shoes out of the closet, and I’m pulling on my socks right now!