If you’ve ever looked to produce a yearly report, a white paper, a series of tech sheets, or any other project that falls under the broad and rather complicated category of “tech writing,” you’ve probably felt overwhelmed and unsure about where to start. This post can help.
Approaching and efficiently delivering any tech writing project is a big job. However, it’s a job worth learning more about because it can encompass many different projects, can be enormously beneficial across a range of business, and can resonate with a variety of audiences.
In this post, I’ll discuss some of the best approaches to effective and efficient tech writing. In posts to follow, I’ll identify useful tools to aid execution and completion.
Starting and finishing tech writing projects depends on setting scope, communicating progress, soliciting feedback, and submitting or publishing the final work.
Setting a rigorous scope constitutes the first step, and it is key. When you set a scope for a tech writing project, you determine:
- Marketing objectives
- Topic and style
- Content team
- Calendar and schedule
Although tech writing projects are built to suit, with a prefigured topic and audience, it’s still important to explicitly identify every project’s topic and readership.
The identification is necessary because most tech writing projects are produced by a team, often with an outside writer. Ensuring that every team member knows what they’re writing about (and for whom) ensures consistency. It also helps project leads get as specific as possible about their marketing objectives: After all, a tech-based Q&A offered as a download on a business’s website reaches a different audience than the same content published through a trade organization.
Setting scope also requires identifying subject matter experts (SMEs) who can contribute objective and evidence-based material. Designating SMEs before a project begins—and often bringing them into the process of setting scope—can gain their timely and invested participation.
Finally, setting scope requires a calendar and schedule. There’s really no way around the fact that tech writing is an iterative process, and each iteration requires review. Identifying the team and gaining their early buy-in can help manage touchpoint fatigue (aka, “You need me to look at this again?”). Creating a granular schedule can ensure maximum efficiency. When SMEs and others can anticipate the commitment required from the jump, they can better rise to their role.
Setting scope is the most important step in completing tech writing projects. Sharing the scope ensures that objectives are met, that SMEs understand and anticipate their commitment, and that the project moves along as efficiently as possible.
Budgeting for Books
The internet can be wild and wonderful marketplace, but it can be wily and—let’s get real—wretched, especially for an emptor who is not expert at cavere. Evidently, scams flourish in a personless exchange.
Most prospective self-published authors know to exercise caution when vetting publishing, marketing, or promotional schemes. But most will (and should) spend relatively significant sums on hiring help to write, edit, design, format, convert, print, market, promote, and distribute a book.
According to a recent NetGalley Insights post, reporting on a joint NetGalley and Independent Book Publishers Association survey of author-publishers, “the majority of authors spent between $1,000 and $6,000 on their books”
Self-published authors may expect a front-end expense to actualize their ideas as books, but traditionally published authors can (and should) allocate funds for their books, too.
Traditionally published authors will receive an advance and/or royalties for their work, and these are more likely when an author has a finished (and excellent) manuscript in hand. Of course, completion takes time, and time, as discussed in a prior post, is discrete and therefore valuable.
While the advance (and/or royalties) can offset costs, it rarely compensates for time already spent, much less extras such as marketing and promotion beyond that offered by a traditional publishing house. That’s why traditional authors can benefit from building in a line item for marketing and promotion expenses, too.
Not all traditional authors will need or even want to spend money on a PR or other promotional plan, but quantifying the expense in a book budget can help make good on the time already invested.
Time Is a Line Item: Budgeting for Books
Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash
Whether you subscribe to the manager’s lament that time is money or consider the matter more poetically, writing a book requires a budget—in terms of cash and commitment.
Most people know that writing a book takes a lot of time, but—ironically—foreknowledge doesn’t make reality less surprising. This is particularly true for authors who have been mulling over their ideas for years, have reached the now-or-never precipice of action, and are ready to work.
In the case of a book, the “work” is often slow and circuitous. It can take a long time to think of and test out ideas, outline and draft and revise and outline and draft and revise again, solicit readers and reviewers and editors, and efficiently integrate the best and most applicable feedback.
That’s why our nonfiction authors take nine months to two years to develop an idea into a book that can be pitched to and secured by a traditional publishing contract. On average, our nonfiction authors who begin with an idea but not a draft work sixteen months before they are ready to approach publishers.
For memoir writers, the timeline can be longer. This might be because memoir writers, although they frequently arrive with a draft in hand, must do strategic work to identify and understand their audience. Further, unlike argument-based nonfiction, the parameters of memoir writing are nowhere near fixed. An author must decide which of the almost infinite moments that make up a life will meaningfully move readers.
The point of this post is not a reality check, though, I swear! Whether or not authors keep their expectations realistic is a moot point: The difficulty of finding time to write and then actually writing makes reality almost impossible to avoid.
The point of the post is to develop your book with a plan that budgets not just money (which I’ll discuss next) but hours, days, weeks, maybe months, possibly years. When you enter a line item for time, you make a wise investment.
Metaphors Are More Powerful Than You Might Think
In The Moves that Matter: A Chess Grandmaster on the Game of Life (slated for November release), Jonathan Rowson calls chess a meta-metaphor. He means that chess—in its constrained freedom, broad competition, and negotiated relationships—provides a library of comparisons to help us think deeply about life. But Rowson also claims that there’s a sense in which the metaphor of chess “has greater reality and resonance than the game itself” (13).
Rowson’s point deserves unpacking, which he capably does in his book, but it’s his identification of a metaphor’s practical power that matters here.
In etymological terms, metaphor breaks apart into meta-, for change, and phor, for carrying. It’s typically consigned to the literary, but it’s used powerfully (also pitiably) in public and political discourses—think of Trump’s expedient invocation of a “witch hunt” or his specious claim to “drain the swamp.”
While politicians know that well-chosen metaphors influence people’s opinions, research confirms that metaphors change behaviors, too. In the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers present a study focused on the continuation of preferred behaviors after goal completion. What, for example, helps people continue eating healthfully after completing a diet program? Or, what helps college students
keep at their study habits after they’ve aced the test? What did researchers find? The metaphor matters. Participants who considered their attainment of a goal as part of “journey” were more likely to continue the behaviors that brought about achievement. The two other participant groups—one of which considered goal attainment a “destination,” and one of which applied no metaphor at all —demonstrated no such likelihood of continuing preferred behaviors.
While metaphors will almost always add panache to your work—be it a speech, an article, or a book—it turns out that they also help us reflect on our lives and, according to recent research, live better ones.
Even More Communications Processes!
For most project participants (and general readers, too), communications processes are basic logistics management: They’re in the background, they’re boring, and they feel inconsequential.
However, if you’ve worked on a tech writing team (or any writing team), you know that projects often fall (gently or painfully) apart. Project managers forget to reply-all; SMEs miss their interviews; writers edit old versions; proofreaders fail to update and send out style guides.
Most of the time, the problems can be traced back to ineffective communications processes.
A successfully completed multimember team project (where “success” equals an excellent product and the mutual respect and good will of team members), requires a project lead, weekly team meetings, uniform file-naming system, and general team investment in the efficacy of the communications processes.
An identifiable and self-identified project lead updates everyone and holds everyone accountable. Without a recognizable lead, it’s hard to identify a “team,” and a project may not even get off the ground.
Weekly team meetings that are written into the project calendar make the project an obvious priority. Ad hoc meetings theoretically work, but the work calendar self-populates at a rigorous rate, and it’s almost always impossible—especially with far-flung team members—to schedule a meeting tomorrow that everyone can attend.
The utility of a rigorously used file-naming system is obvious. But it requires use and enforcement. If a project lead doesn’t establish and apply it, a file’s dead versions are resurrected and important updates get lost.
Boring? Maybe. But most definitely consequential. If you work on writing projects (or aspire to), do yourself a favor by establishing the communications processes that will make your project a success.
More Tools for Tech: Communications Processes
produced over an extended period of time, and partly because production is iterative, tech writing projects require rock-solid communications processes to ensure completion.
Communications processes refer to the ways that team members provide reviews, comments, revisions, approvals, and updates. Sounds (somewhat) simple, but a typical white paper often includes a client, a project lead, one or two writers, two or three subject-matter experts, and an SME liaison (sometimes affectionately called the “wrangler”). This 7- or 8-person team may start their project on the same page, but when a file is misnamed or misplaced, or an SME interview is missed or mis-scheduled, the project can easily run off track.
Wayward writing projects stretch scope, but they also stretch the patience of participants, which can be even more frustrating.
To help mitigate mishaps associated with files or individual schedules (because they can never be completely avoided), establish a sound communications process while setting the project scope. This means:
Next-level communications processes include ensuring team members cc the communication lead on all emails, putting Zoom or other conferencing info numbers and links in all project-specific emails, and sending out a weekly project calendar with relevant updates.
Implementing and practicing effective communications processes can be arduous, but by helping to navigate the pitfalls that throw projects off track, rock-solid communications ease the load and lead to quicker completion.
Tech Writing: Tools of the Trade
If you’ve ever looked to produce a yearly report, a white paper, a series of tech sheets, or any other project that falls under the broad and rather complicated category of “tech writing,” you’ve probably felt overwhelmed and unsure about where to start. This post can help.
Approaching and efficiently delivering any tech writing project is a big job. However, it’s a job worth learning more about because it can encompass many different projects, can be enormously beneficial across a range of business, and can resonate with a variety of audiences.
In this post, I’ll discuss some of the best approaches to effective and efficient tech writing. In posts to follow, I’ll identify useful tools to aid execution and completion.
Starting and finishing tech writing projects depends on setting scope, communicating progress, soliciting feedback, and submitting or publishing the final work.
Setting a rigorous scope constitutes the first step, and it is key. When you set a scope for a tech writing project, you determine:
Although tech writing projects are built to suit, with a prefigured topic and audience, it’s still important to explicitly identify every project’s topic and readership.
The identification is necessary because most tech writing projects are produced by a team, often with an outside writer. Ensuring that every team member knows what they’re writing about (and for whom) ensures consistency. It also helps project leads get as specific as possible about their marketing objectives: After all, a tech-based Q&A offered as a download on a business’s website reaches a different audience than the same content published through a trade organization.
Setting scope also requires identifying subject matter experts (SMEs) who can contribute objective and evidence-based material. Designating SMEs before a project begins—and often bringing them into the process of setting scope—can gain their timely and invested participation.
Finally, setting scope requires a calendar and schedule. There’s really no way around the fact that tech writing is an iterative process, and each iteration requires review. Identifying the team and gaining their early buy-in can help manage touchpoint fatigue (aka, “You need me to look at this again?”). Creating a granular schedule can ensure maximum efficiency. When SMEs and others can anticipate the commitment required from the jump, they can better rise to their role.
Setting scope is the most important step in completing tech writing projects. Sharing the scope ensures that objectives are met, that SMEs understand and anticipate their commitment, and that the project moves along as efficiently as possible.
Is It A Book, or Is It A Powerpoint?
Business owners and consultants frequently solicit our services for turning their content into a book. Niche business books can do excellent work in the world, but they often don’t because business-owning writers habitually mistake their primary audience.
A primary audience is the audience most likely to receive value from reading your book. These readers need your book because it has answers to their most-frequently-asked questions and offers them relevant and usable information.
Primary readers are not just inherently attracted to your book’s title; they also intuitively know where in the bookstore your book is likely to be shelved—usually because they read (or know the titles of) the other books with which your book is in conversation.
This means that your primary audience never has to work too hard to find and make use of your book’s value: Your book is written for—and to—them. You determine your book’s content, but your primary audience determines everything else, from the voice and style you adopt, to the types of evidence you use for support and persuasion.
Because the primary audience determines so much, correctly identifying it is crucial to your book’s success and should be completed in the foundational stages of strategizing your work.
This is not always easy to do. In fact, business owners often misidentify their primary audience as prospective rather than current clients. The difference may sound irrelevant, but the designation results in two very different books.
Books written for prospective clients have value, of course, but the value is usually narrowed to sales. Perhaps surprisingly, “capturing sales” is too-general a foundation: It may require comprehensive knowledge of your pitch, but it requires little to no knowledge of real readers. Without understanding them, writers will find it painfully difficult to meaningfully answer questions related to argument, voice, style, and even design and publication strategy.
Mistaking prospective clients as a book’s primary audience will result in a bad book. But it’s a hard mistake to avoid because prospective clients are precisely the audience to whom business presentations are pitched.
In a follow-up post, I’ll discuss how to specifically identify your book’s primary audience so as to safeguard yourself from negative reactions, like, “This could’ve been a PowerPoint.” I’ll also show you how early identification of your audience makes the work of developing every other element of the book easier and more clear.
Take Tiny Breaks
Most of us intuitively welcome sleep as one of the best and most important things in life. Its depth and duration redound not just in the quantity of our years but in the quality of those years, too. When National Geographic took an in-depth look at the benefits of sleep, it found that during sleep, spindles stimulate the cortex and help categorize new info according to the old info we’ve already acquired. And in episode two of its third season, Radio Lab showed how certain tasks can be better completed (or completed in the first place) after a good night’s—or even a good nap’s—sleep.
Old research has frequently spoken to the brain benefits of this kind of “offline learning,” but new research argues that even tiny breaks are important to achieving new tasks. When we combine the ameliorating effects of resting and the incremental achievements gained through micro-ambition, we gain a better picture of “micro-offline gains”: the very small but very necessary work that enables skill acquisition.
Micro-offline gains suggest that skill acquisition depends not (or not just) on the active effort to learn a new skill or to complete a task but in the periods of rest we offer our brain to consolidate the information it’s working so hard to acquire. Ultimately, when we tax our brains with learning a new skill or staying focused on a big, integrated project, we accomplish more when we offer our brain more, very short, breaks.
Even when they’re just seconds long, these tiny breaks can aid our completion of the task at hand (or at least can aid our accomplishment in the steepest part of the learning curve). Unfortunately, the breaks aren’t the kind that include Instagram or other semi-conscious scrolling; rather, they’re micro-moments that mimic the consolidating effects of sleep.
Summer is a time for downshifting. Although I’ve already contributed to this cause by advocating for aiming lower, I’m now also arguing for interrupting your project with more guiltfree breaktime. This is especially true for my clients who struggle to make summer the most productive season of writing. It turns out that scheduling many opportunities for micro-offline gains can help with making connections and building arguments. The season requires it, and your brain will thank you by becoming smarter, faster.
Lower Your Standards, or, the Case for Micro-Ambition
Tiny award available from Tokens and Trophies on Etsy
Micro-ambition, or “the passionate pursuit of short-term goals” is generally attributed to Tim Minchin, an Australian comedian and somewhat of a renaissance man, who advocated for the term in a 2013 commencement address (which offers other truisms that I passionately endorse, including, “There is an inverse correlation between depression and exercise. Do it. Run, my beautiful intellectuals, run”).
Whereas macro-ambition refers to the passionate pursuit of The Dream, micro-ambition refers to the work in front of you. Macro-ambition sometimes works for those with A Dream, but it doesn’t always lead to success, and the cost of pushing achievement into an indeterminate future can be high.*
That’s why while most of our clients procure our services in the pursuit of macro-ambition, we try to structure our offerings according to short-term goals and the work that needs to be done today. This sort of micro-ambition too neatly dovetails with the uniquely American dedication to life-hacking productivity, but micro-ambition does not advocate for productivity for its own sake. After all, there’s nothing either particularly ambitious or necessarily fulfilling about simply being “productive.”
Rather, we offer micro-ambitious services that we’ve typically described as “strategic.” For example, for an author working on a first draft of a memoir, we offer strategic prompts soliciting tiny stories that contribute to the memoir’s theme. Or, for an author testing out curriculum guidelines for inclusion in a guidebook, we help create smaller strategic publications to determine reader engagement and guideline efficacy.
Strategy has become too encompassing a word, though, probably because it has been just about fully pushed into the land of useless jargon (from which words rarely return). Micro-ambition, though at first glance just as useless, captures for the moment the very small achievements that can elicit the engaged work that ultimately adds up to A Dream, even if it’s not the dream the author first had in mind.
*Minchin’s existential takedown of the lifetime pursuit of A Dream: “[I]t’ll take you most of your life to achieve, so by the time you get to it and are staring into the abyss of the meaninglessness of your achievement, you’ll be almost dead so it won’t matter.”
The Case for the Call
Julian Chokkattu / Digital Trends
Inspired by my last post’s gif and by a few recent client experiences, I want today to advocate for the phone.
For contract workers, freelancers, and anyone working remotely, email (and its more casual cousins, like Slack) are the queens of communications processes. Asking a quick Q, updating a far-flung project partner, onboarding a client: In all of these cases (and most others) it feels supremely efficient to send a quick email. Email lets you get stuff done when you’re in the midst of other work.
But sometimes that’s a problem. Email aids the multitasker, but its benefits are often perceived rather than real (research typically shows that the high mental cost of task-switching makesmultitasking pretty inefficient anyway).
At the same time, inbox scope creep is very real and a very real problem. It’s hard to hierarchize replies and responses to anything when everything—every query, question, and fyi—is piled on top of an already towering heap.
Meanwhile, the phone, also a tool of communication, seldom feels like an appealing alternative. In the email era, a call may feel a little intimidating. It’s more involved, and it’s more intimate, perhaps because it seems to require participants’ (almost) complete attention.
But a phone call conveys care, and—because it assumes an immediate response—helps aid prioritization. It can also keep projects running smoothly. A few years ago, I began integrating phone calls into my SOP where I’d typically send an email. It’s hard to gauge the impact on productivity, but I absolutely noticed a difference in my work. Getting on the phone to more regularly check in and troubleshoot helped partnerships feel real and invested.
Because of this, I’ve become an advocate for picking up the phone: It may be out of style, and it definitely feels more labor intensive, but that doesn’t mean it’s not time to bring it back.