Needless to say, I am very pleased with my decision to take this job. Things are going very well. I’ve got nice colleagues, a great boss, and everyone is just so nice to each other. It’s been quite a long time since I’ve worked somewhere where people are nice to each other. Sad, isn’t it?

I’ve updated three support guides, edited a training document, made suggestions on another training document, and have done about 4 hours of online training. Okay, that last part isn’t part of the equation in my “how much have you written this week” question, but still, I thought I’d add it to the pile. I’ve been busy, and I’m happy.

1. My day job keeps me too busy. This is my own personal demon that’s kept me from striking out as a freelancer. It’s the 100-pound gorilla on my back, the elephant in the room (pick your metaphor). So when the chance to go freelance finally presented itself last month, I took it. Jumped into the deep end with both feet and I’ve been loving every minute of it. Even though I’ve made a grand total of $5 so far, I haven’t had this much fun in years!
2. I’m not inspired to write. This is another tough one to battle, as we’ve all run into it. Whether it’s because you’re too tired from your day job, you’re sick, your kids or family take up too much of your time, sometimes inspiration is nowhere to be found. But this is when you’ve got to persevere and just do it. I’ve been trying to stick to a writing schedule, making sure I write something everyday.
3. I don’t have a niche topic to write about. This is an easy one to fix, even though you might think you are truly stuck for topics. Sit down with a blank pad of paper and a pen (or a blank text file on your computer, whichever works for you.) Think of three things you like to do. You could write “cook”, “eat”, and “play video games”. Good, now think of 5 more. Pull out your thesaurus and start looking up some of these words and see what other topics you can develop. Pretty soon your page will be full of ideas and topics for niches you can write about. Do a bit of research on the Web and see what sites or publications are out there for those topics. There you have it, you’ve discovered your niche topic, the things you like to write about. Chances are these are topics you’re passionate about, and have some knowledge about, so you can just start writing. So go ahead, start writing.
4. Web content writing is different than corporate writing, so I won’t be able to find work as a web writer. Another one that’s specific to me. I’ve worked as a technical writer for over 8 years in a corporate environment, so writing web content is definitely something I’ve not done “professionally”. BUT, I do consider myself a writer first, and a computer geek second, so between those two things I know I can figure it out. I do some research on web content writing, and I read blogs and articles…A LOT of blogs and articles. And I started writing posts on my own blogs (like this one), practicing the craft. While I know I’m not perfect, I think I’m getting the handle of it, and I know that as a good writer, I trust myself to be able to write whatever web content is needed, for either myself or a potential client. Plus I can use these posts as “clips” for job applications.

• a technical writer
• a technical editor
• the Style Police Chief
• the Standards Policy Maker
• the Translator

That last one is a new one for me at my current position because we haven’t had to use my language skills as of yet. At other jobs I often coordinated the French translation of our documentation, however because I’m not a certified translator, my employer didn’t want me doing it. And that was fine by me, because quite frankly, I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing it. My current employer needed to fill the gap between the contractor translation company we previously used, and the in-house translators we will be hiring shortly, so I was asked if I would be willing to do some translation work for us. Normally I wouldn’t be comfortable doing it, however the documents I would be translating were in a conversational tone, (informational bulletins for our user base), and not a technical manual on how to install our software. So this made it somewhat easier to say yes. Besides, I have been wanting to flex my French & Italian muscles at work for a while now, so it was a good opportunity to do so.

Having been a French and Italian literature student in my academic days, I was used to writing up 20-page essays in those languages discussing the literary themes of abandonment in 18th century France (or comparing the existential nature of 20th century French & Italian literature), but these bulletins are an absolute treat to work on since the longest is only 600 words. The main issue right now is going to be the timeline of doing the translations. I’ve got 11 bulletins to translate into both French & Italian, so that’s 22 “documents” to produce in under 9 business days. I thought I was going to have to work a few late nights or on the weekend, however in two days I was already able to finish off 10 of the 22, so I figured I was making good headway. I started off with the shortest bulletins, and did them first in Italian and then in French, and was in a good groove.

Translation work is also a good way to exercise some of my tech writing skills as I’ve had to research online resources (I’m simply amazed at the host of good websites out there that help me conjugate my verbs, or provide me with synonyms in both French & Italian), and use these online tools. It’s been a great experience so far, and is a welcome change to my usual tech writing duties.

I’m enjoying helping out my current employers out of a jam, however I am also aware that I don’t want to let this become a regular habit, because I know that this could interfere with my TW mandate there. And I am finally making good headway on my mandate, producing some documents that are a great starting point for system documentation, so I don’t want to derail that.