#TECHNICAL DOCUMENT WRITER ZIP#

But I won’t deny that the income eases a ton of the stressors of my past life (especially as the sole income-earner in my family, with a toddler and a husband who just went back to school). I don’t think technical or sales writing is intrinsically “worth” more than beautiful prose. For contractors, pay may be project based rather than hourly, which for me had ranged between $400 and $2,500 per project.ĭo I think it’s fair that technical writers get paid more than some journalists and novelists? No. The pay in the tech-writing industry is anywhere between $30 to $50 an hour, with salaried writers making typically between $50,000 and $70,000 a year.

Plus, it leaves some breathing room in my creative well at the end of the day for the types of writing and art that bring me true joy. It’s nice to have clear expectations and a process to follow, rather than feel like every day is a desperate attempt to flag down the muse. “In this lesson, we’ll cover a, b and c” or “When selling to this type of person, discuss a, b and c.” Although there are creative aspects to technical writing, most of the writing I do is black and white. And there’s a hidden benefit to ignorance: If, by the end of my writing, I can understand something complex, I am fairly certain my audience will understand it too. I still don’t 100 percent understand the difference between a switch and a router, but I’m not ashamed to ask a colleague. I’m not Steve Jobs I’m just a person who pays close attention to what she reads and asks a lot of questions. Companies will always rely on the written word to communicate, teach and sell.Īlthough my ability to extract critical business issues from an SME transcript may be less romantic than, say, my novel about low-income, spirited lesbian waitresses struggling with addiction (that’s a real-unpublished-thing I wrote), the former pays the bills, promises growth and affords me new joys in life. We’ve been hearing talk for a while about the changing face of journalism, but technical writing isn’t going anywhere. Here are some of the things I’ve learned about this market: And new types of projects became open to me: editing a PowerPoint slide, writing catchy marketing copy and performing quality assurance on a completed course. And although I still have plenty to learn, I’m now twice as fast at completing an assignment than I was when I started.

#TECHNICAL DOCUMENT WRITER ZIP#

And I was asked to do another project-one that made the difficulty of my first akin to something called “How to Zip Up Your Fly: A Post-Urination Guide.”īut the more I familiarized myself with the industry jargon, the more this type of writing started to feel natural. When I finally finished it, I got paid promptly.

I cleared out my schedule and locked myself in my office for an entire weekend. I jumped at the opportunity-and got the job.That first project was hard. Then one day I saw a job posting that told me the company was looking for a full-time writer. A few days later I was given an assignment, for which I would be paid more money than I’d earned in the last six months. My hope was to show them I could at least do research and put words into grammatically acceptable sentences. So I just did my own thing I wrote a marketing blurb about the company, based on its website content and whatever else I could find online. When I read the instructions, I didn’t understand half the words onscreen, let alone what I was supposed to do with them.

When applying for the job, I was asked to complete a “writing assessment” that all contractors are required to take to determine their skill level. 4 Groups That Will Help You Work Your Networkīut let me go back.

Technical document writer