Writing Assignment #3

I want to have a defined process. From my internship I have developed skills and from those I have pulled out a personal process, which is the focus of my portfolio, that have sustained me through the months. I feel it is important to have a process to be successful. Methodology makes me successful personally. And being able to look back on where I started, where I came from, and where I went in my "formative" months, I think I will be able to grow from that. I can appreciate my work for what it is. I do not author much of the work so when I read there are times I cringe and have to remember there was only so much I could do, there are only so many hours in the day. I look at each document and pull out the sections I put hard work into and I can generally see what sections those are. Is the formatting well done? Are the appendices very complete? Etc. As I continue to work in the field and become more efficient both in my work and work with authors and other team members, it is my hope I will be able to conquer more of these aspects in each document. I defined my portfolio early on, in terms of how I was going to arrange it and what I was going to focus on so I did not need help choosing documents. I save copies of documents on my jump drive so it was easy to chose!

Writing Assignment #2

I prefer to write in the afternoon or evening, that way I have had a full day of experiences to draw and reflect on. Even though writing can be stressful or frustrating, writing in the afternoon can be a winding down process. A stressful or busy day can be eased by research or outline writing, developing a thesis or idea you have conjured the day before. My thought processes work better after going through my daily routine.

I like to write where it is quiet mostly; quiet and where I can spread out. I always have lots of paper, notes, books and usually a computer around me. In the beginning stages of a paper, story, or even portfolio, I can begin in a public place like a restaurant or coffee shop to take in the atmosphere and have the background noise. I enjoy writing in libraries also. I generally work in my apartment because I have my books, notes and computer files at my fingertips. I make use of all available resources in my work and at times I cannot move forward without a key piece (of it).

I have a process in writing papers and creating documents from scratch. I came across this by trial and error in high school. I use different color of pens, lots of blank white paper, post-it notes, outlines and lots of space to spread out. I employ some of the same techniques at my current job. I also try to stay hydrated. It is important for me to work on a piece over a period of time. It helps to put writing down and come back to it. You will see the piece in a different way, you will see different things, things you missed, you may even see it in a new light-or not like it and start over completely after you pick it up again. Writing last minute is difficult for me. I also like to have other eyes on my work to get different perspectives. Editing is an important part of writing-both individually and peer reviews.

These "things" say I am a reflective writer like Maria in our book. I am methodical and take my time. I make use of my resources and I am organized. I think it is important, at least for me to maintain these characteristics in my writing for the entirety of my career. Like my my mother always says, TTT: things take time!

Writing Assignment #1

I just got the portfolio book that I order over a month ago, sorry.

In terms of creating my portfolio, I think my biggest problem will be analyzing the choices I made during the piece. Each document I work on here is at least 30 pages. There are many decisions and variables that go into the creation of one document and writing a reflective essay may be challenging. English majors often create portfolios, so I have plenty of experience and I have taken many approaches to the creation of these bodies of work but I think as a PWE student I may want to take a more straightforward, traditional route. I've been thinking I may want to use one document and chronicle the path I took. I may use the final document, the document with tracked changes, and supporting emails. The focus of my blog has been process and I think showing how one document went through all of the steps may be a good approach. I fear that may not create a clear picture or give a complete, standard portfolio. I have done many types of work here, created different types of documents and learned how to do and deal with many situations.

I think with my document selection I may be able to highlight what went wrong in the process and how both I can improve and I can help the team to be more efficent. I have been thinking about which document I have worked on would highlight both the good and bad "things" that have gone on in the past few months. Further investigation is needed!

Cut and Paste

I wrote about "cutting losses" in my last post, which as I re-read can perhaps describe my mantra. When working on a timetable, coordinating with others and trying to get a document through the process, something will always need to give.

The longer I work here, the easier it is for me to decide what is the most important part, piece or ingredient of a document. It becomes more clear to me who I can ask for help and who to go to get answers in order to get the job done. The very first thing I will always do when a document is passed to tech writing (TW) is merge the templates. I will do this regardless of the amount of time I have, the state of the document, or who it is being delivered to. The only exception (currently) is if the delivery is meeting minutes which are simply made to look like the last week's delivery. These are informal and not templated.

Once a new document is in the template it will need cleaned up because merging templates never works properly. This step can take anywhere from an hour to six hours. The more people who have worked on a document, the more cutting, copying and pasting, individual spacing and weird indentations that have gone on, the longer it will take for me to do my job. I personally find that getting a document into a uniformed, clean, professional "template" is one of the most important parts of my job. But while I am working on formatting, I must keep several other things in mind:

• Time for TW: how long do I have for this document? If I only have a few hours to tech write it then I need to complete major formatting (correct headings and table captions so the TOC will be in place correctly) all while reading the doc at the same time.
• Time for QA: after TW is finished with the doc, it goes to Quality Assurance. QA is responsible for making sure the document addresses all of the peer review comments and/or customer comments.
• Content: is the content complete? In my editing, am I being careful not to change the content? In technical writing there are times when you have to give up your need to mark-up a document that is written poorly to save the content.
• Time altogether: factoring together time for everything to be done to the document, all changes to be made as well as the delivery to the customer (done online but still can take up to 20 minutes)

I'll try and give you a few example situations of how I handle different types of documents.

• I worked on a document Friday and Saturday which was an updated version of a fairly outdated plan. The content had been updated in places, certain diagrams replaced, deletions were made and sections rewritten. The document was sent to TW around 3pm Friday. It was due NLT 2pm today (Monday). It was requested by the author that the doc be finished with TW by COB Friday or midday Saturday so we could give QA as much time as possible with it. The content was not totally complete and some sections may have needed reworked. I decided not to begin so late on a Friday and came in Saturday morning. I spent several hours Saturday and got it in good working shape. Working over the weekend allowed me to focus on smaller things and make the document look nicer. This plan had had many revisions and, well the formatting was a little messy. I made many changes and submitted back into our system. Monday (today) I came back in and worked for several more hours addressing changes the author had in content, more formatting as a result of shifting paragraphs and sections and updates in tables. I felt because I came in and completed a thorough tech edit over the weekend I had time to pay more attention to content and grammar changes as opposed to rushing through the document. It went to QA around 10am with 70 some items (comments) needing to be addressed. When those came back to me, final changes were made and it went out on time. This was an effective delivery because everyone involved worked together and on schedule. The author had the document to TW and QA in the time frame that is outlined in our policies (2 days) which allows for on-time deliveries. I don't think anyone felt rushed or much was compromised as a result.

• For the past two weeks I have been focused on several Install Plans, which have worked quite the opposite of my docs this weekend. These plans have been very rushed and somewhat chaotic. The Installs were brand new and consisted of many charts, tables and diagrams all being created/designed specifically for this purpose. The timetable for the documents was not communicated accurately or at least not followed well by all participating members of the document. With both installs I focused more on layout than verbiage. My rationale behind that was an install plan is a plan. The text was simple enough and the diagrams were there to display and to show the customer what we were going to do. With a 40 page document and complex diagrams such as the ones included, I felt visual design was more important that perfect grammar. This particular document was not complex or rich in content; it was on a very basic level and if the peer review and customer comments were addressed I was satisfied provided we could get it out the door on-time.

I find the two most important and defining factors in my work(ing) on documents are how many formatting issues and the amount of comments that need addressed. Depending how many issues of each need addressed the outcome of a document needs to be tailored and can change.

Recommendation

If you are ever considering going into tech writing or editing I highly recommend looking into MSOffice 2007. Its programs (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc.) are formatted and operate very differently. The design is dramatic (and exciting!) and it seems there are many more options available. I personally love the new layout and enjoy working in the program. But in order to be an effective editor, you need to be at the top of your game. You cannot spend 20 minutes looking for a captioning tool. Co-workers will be coming to you with Word questions, you are the writing expert.

During my first week I was told many times, "oh so you're one of those people who knows her way around Office," "you can find stuff so fast on Word, can't you, I'm coming to you when I get stuck." In order to be effective you need to know your tools. I hadn't played around with Office 07 but in my first few weeks I spent a good bit of time reading about the programs on the Internet and familiarizing myself with them in my downtime. If I hadn't my documentation would suffer. As it is, I would love to take a course in Office 2007 and become certified in the programs because there is so much to know and it would make me a better editor.

When formatting is used incorrectly it slows everyone down. This is the fewer people who touch a document the better. You never know how many people hit tab 50 times or individually spaced something instead of centering or using the proper tool. Here are a few of my favorite formatting tools that I think everyone should know, learn, and love:

• Headings- Headings make outlines uniformed not only in sizing and spacing but they will remain in chronological order. The correct use of headings will allow the table of contents to be easily updated.
• Captioning- Captions for tables and figures can help create a professional looking document. Also, using the caption heading and caption format will allow a list of tables/figures to be created and easily updated.
• Ctrl+F- Control F finds anything you want in a document just as it would on an Internet page. It could be a word, a character, or a number. This feature also has the ability to replace all. So if a term is outdated and used 20 times in one document Ctrl+F and then replace all with the new word. The incorrect term will be replaced at every instance it occurs. I found an website today that said you can search for specific instances of formatting too, such as italic text as opposed to just words. (I was excited!)
  

My process

I have been beyond busy at work these past few weeks. Apparently once it gets out that you're competent, it's all over. Since the work has become steady I've found it is necessary to have a process. I need to have a certain way to approach a document in order to hit all the key points before throwing it over to the next person in line who looks at it.

As a tech writer I have two main responsibilities: to format and to edit. When an outsider or even the author or the document thinks about it, he or she immediately concludes the most important part of my jobs is editing the atrocious writing. Yes, that is important. But I have found what is more important is to put the document in a presentable, professional format. Some of these documents come to me grossly mis-formatted and some not at all. As a government contract we need to present professional, unified looking documents. I think that is a top priority. We should not be turning out sloppy products. I don't think anyone really wants to do that. So I've decided that formatting, applying the template and making sure all the necessary pieces and parts are included in a given document are there is my number one priority.

I think the misconception about being an editor is that you get to rewrite things-you don't. As a tech editor you cannot change content. In fact, most of the time I struggle to fix grammar and at times punctuation because I am unsure of the technical terms. My thought on the "editing" portion is that you can and have to control what you can control. There are times you have to cut your loses and take what you can get, excuse the expressions and cultural references. I think many people expect a certain level of correctness (or lack there of) from scientists, engineers and the like and those authors are cut a break. There is only so much you can do in an 80 page document. If you change one chunk of text to sound perfect, it isn't consistent with the other 1000 pieces that follow. I've found picking and choosing what makes a coherent, presentable, visually appealing, comprehensive document is the way to go. And if I can find a way to produce such a document effectively then I know I'll be a tech writer and editor!

Balance

In reading the other blogs and scanning my own in the past few days I've realized something: I have taken a very different approach to the "reflective" aspect of the internship. My job is very serious and fast paced and because of that I tend to juggle several projects at once, some of them (like the popular WSR are ongoing and occur on a regular basis). I could post on here everyday with an update of what I have been doing. Sometimes it would be an update of a project, others expressing frustrations, successes or even the failures of a document I have been working on. I find I have been writing much more casually because I work in a professional setting and deal with very technical documents-many of which I am still trying to learn the basics of in order to understand context. Learning to balance your own life and a work life can be difficult and I do not want to lose my own voice in the midst of software development, biometrics and the GWOT.