I’m glad you enjoyed it. There is so much story to tell. Lets hope I can keep it as interesting throughout.

John Hewitt gives us the first of a series of personal essays on becoming a technical writer. Well written and engaging….

Tom Johnsons last blog post..Approaching Help as Solutions to Problems — An Interesting Format from the CSS Cookbook

Glad you did! Otherwise, we wouldn’t have been graced with this excellent and informative series!

Jeanne

It is interesting how careers that seem viable in the beginning become less and less viable as you move on. I definitely hit some rough patches in the technical writing arena. I’ll get to those as I move forward.

You are right. I had done quite a bit of technical work in the past, but I hadn’t been a technical writer. It was my assessment of my skills that convinced me I could do the job. All I had to do was convince others of the same thing.

@ Yuwanda

A good cliffhanger makes for a good story. You haven’t heard the last of my debt either.

@ Morgan

I had a friend who was a Russian translator for the army. That was back in the eighties though. He writes too, or at least he used to. I don’t think we’ve talked in about fifteen years. His wife didn’t like me, so that was end of that friendship. As for turning the posts into a book, it is certainly a thought on my mind.

@ cmdweb

Are you still with the same company or did you move elsewhere as you moved upwards?

How did I land my first serious job? I wanted to impress my grandfather. I wanted to defy expectations. I wanted to find a way to pay for college. So….I enlisted in the Army. Gained self-discipline, broke my back learning to rappel from helicopters, got paid to learn Russian on the coast of California.

Never really thought of location as a factor. Opportunities are where you make them/find them.

I started writing poetry in grade school and graduated to collaborating with my cousin on a homemade newspaper for the family. However, I can’t say what sparked my interest or why I felt compelled to write.