Setting strong roots to succeed at technical writing.
Day 2 of Hashnode Bootcamp
Hi everyone, today I have participated in day two of Hashnode Bootcamp on technical writing which is the inspiration behind this post because as the talk was going on I was thinking about what makes a good writer by the cases I have seen, by the posts I like to read, by the authors I admire. Can I mix that with the knowledge I have in other areas where I had done well to find my own way?
And I tried to think about the approach I had taken in other areas like programming and learning a second language and three questions came to my mind:
What's my motivation?
What challenges am I facing?
How is my current process and how can I improve it?
The motivation
Growing up I came along with some good teachers in college, my English classes and online websites (blogs, educational web pages, youtube) therefore I had a lot of respect for the task those people have as the main purpose in their jobs, which is sharing or facilitating knowledge to others. I think this is the ultimate goal of humans: share knowledge with current and future generations.
The inspiration has been there and I was just waiting for having my own battles in real life as a developer and finding a direction as a person before giving a try to share in a more formal and serious way, and by serious I mean consistent.
Now the experience I have gained in the last years, the community of tech twitter and hashcode itself had just revived the flame. I am sure you have knowledge and ideas claiming a voice to flow through too. What motivates you to write?
I consider that having a clear motivation will serve to keep it going even if the results are not going as intended at first. And that's the first root.
The challenge
In writing, we have the same entities that participate in any communication act: a message, receptor, transmitter, and channel.
The thing is that every part of the communication is a world and challenge itself we have to study our audience, for example, What are they interested in? Where they can be found?, etc. By learning how the audience behaves we can find the things we have to share that meet what are they looking for.
The message requires its structure and technique to properly be understandable in that way our audience can take advantage of it and deliver the results we want.
We as transmitters of the message have to find our voice, pace and style in order to expose our thoughts in a clearer way.
And last but not least the channel. this area is covered by Hashnode so as a developer I thanks them for having a big reason to resist the temptation and avoid building my own blog (xD).
We can fight the first three challenges with observation, studying (reading blogs, courses, bootcamps, guides), and practice. the community is always a good source of learning and inspiration, in 13-blogging-tips-for-developers by Edidiong Asikpo I first read about finding my writer's voice, and Google and Microsoft style guides on technical writing, I find inspiration in vue documentation and take it as an example of a good balance with code and a simple message to educate about a technical topic, to mention some cases.
The creative process.
Knowing that an article and the engagement it has with the audience is the result of a process and taking into consideration that we'll be more time in the process than the time we'll be on the goal. because once we reach our current goal we'll have others: another article, other projects (that's the cycle of life); I am always looking how I can improve my process, how can I feel better and less stressed, how I can feel more in control of it.
That requires patience and strong habits but will help to deliver good quality content with consistency and without stress.
On day 2 of Hashnode Bootcamp on technical writing Chris Bongers in hist talk How to come up with article ideas and stay consistent shared some useful tips that fit well in this section (as I mention this I'll drop some reference to his talk since it enlightened me).
When I think about the process 3 questions come up When, How, What
When?
Time is one of our more valuable assets and a key aspect to build habits Chris advised that to build consistency we need to publish every x time it's up to you what the x time would be but hopefully not more than one month.
How?
Even though the main goal isn't for writing I think improving note-taking skills helps to brainstorm ideas, organize reads and resources. I read a very good article I recommend note taking for software engineers by Eduardo Vedes where he mentions an interesting concept of second brain
Tools like notion can serve as a base of knowledge to save and organize ideas.
Another gold tip by Chris was to plan ahead 7 articles ideas would help to organize and always having something to write about.
What?
We struggle to find what to write about I was struggling with this until this morning when Chris shared some general sources of inspiration to write about:
Write about your struggles
Write about your knowledge
Write about experiences
What the last thing you googled
The last event you attended
Advice for you but five years ago
Having a system, a well-defined process where you schedule and organize your time to write, help yourself with tools to brainstorm, save and organize ideas plan ahead a good amount of articles to have something to write about always, sounds like a nice creative process to me doesn't it?
The key here is the consistency to form a habit and effort to deliver the same amount of quality.
Wrapping up
Never forgets the motivation you have in the first place it would be useful to keep it going when the outcome is not the one you expected and eventually overcome every barrier on the way.
Not wait to be perfect but try to improve the technical aspects to face challenges: learning, reading, practicing.
Reinforce the process and improve it as much as possible until you find your zone and flow.
Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less. - Marie Curie
If you find this article useful, I invite you to take part in Hashnode Bootcamp if you're not there yet. Lets connect on Twitter and Github. Thanks for reading and have a nice day.
Cover photo by AbsolutVision on Unsplash