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How To Succeed As A Technical Writer
If you have great passion for words and have a degree or diploma in any technology field, then your chances of success is beyond your wildest imaginations. You can be part of that clan of writers out there, who make anything from a thousand dollars to several thousands every month from writing technical articles online for freelance websites, building their brands and getting noticed.
Its a really wonderful field of writing. And, with the advent of Internet and web publication technologies, the traditional text publication platform has tasted a whole revolution. Today, as an author you are free to publish anywhere at your own will. All you need is some talent in writing, which most of us inherently have.
However, in order to succeed, the most important thing is your brand. You may be a great writer offline, you may know it yourself, and possibly, your nearest friends may know of this fact as well. But the world doesnt, your prospective client doesnt. In such a scenario, come the freelance websites. These websites give you a platform to show off your merit and get sales for the content you make.
Examples of the best freelance websites are Guru.com, Elance.com, getafreelancer.com, and so many others. You may just do a search from Google and you will stumble upon a million of them.
What you need to succeed?
One and the most important thing you need for success in freelancing industry is a flawless language and an extensive vocabulary. This will come about as a result of a lot of reading. But do not read any ordinary web publication. You should strive hard to find out the best publications to read. Those, which can enrich your mind, give you some thoughts, and give you new words and ideas. There are not too many of them. And I assure you, top bloggers may not get one sentence correct!
So, look out for authentic sources to read or those sites or blogs, which help you in writing. There are many.
Secondly, you should have quality content in your writing. Writing anything would not make you successful. The quality comes inherently. Naturally. All you have to do is understand what you are writing about and do an in depth research on the topic. Find out the important information on the technology you are going to write about:
Its advantages and disadvantages
Its issues and glitches
Its benefit on the ordinary people
The ways people may use to tweak it to their advantage
The ways to use the tool productively
Any issue with particular groups of people: like children, adults, senior citizens, etc.
Any future improvements
The general statistics of the service provider and the service itself
In any writing about technologies hitting the market and those already in, these points are very important.
To do the research, you can use tools like Google. Do an in depth search for all the terms associated with the technology and find out everything available related to it. Once you get enough information, should read through it. Reading will generate more ideas in you, and will strengthen your points. Start your writing only after you read your research content.
Topic to find
You can find out the topic of writing by various means. The best way is by looking at the current technology news from Fox News, CNN, New York Times, Reuters, BBC World, etc. Such news channels and their websites provide you with the latest happenings in the technology field. What you have to do is read through a specific interesting post and find out the proper keywords. Then do an in depth research on these keywords with Google and Wikipedia. You can get a number of research pages to concentrate your writing on. And such content-rich articles are what the people want, and what hit high in search results. So, they will be purchased for any price you set on them.
All the best to all those who wish to get successful technical writing careers.
BONUS : How To Succeed As A Writer
As a professional copywriter, I'm often asked by aspiring copywriters what they need to do to succeed. Most of their questions center around writing ability. They want to know how to find out if they have the talent to succeed, or if there's a "test" they can take that will tell them if they're a good enough writer to actually get paid to write.
Well, for better or for worse, writing ability has very little to do with a writer's ultimate success. (Business owners who want to write to promote their business, take note -- I'm talking to you as well.)
If there was a test out there (and there isn't by the way) but if there was, I would say the test would deal only with your attitude about writing and leave ability flat out of it.
Yes, you heard me right. Attitude over ability. That's the key to success.
I know. It's hard to hear. As writers, we want so badly to be told our work is good, that it has merit, that we truly are talented. I'm not sure why so many of us need that exterior validation -- perhaps because writing is such a solitary, inner activity that when we do finally come up for air, we want to make sure we haven't been wasting our time.
But to be honest, it IS possible to become a professional writer, to be paid for your work, and not be terribly talented. (In fact, I'll do you one better. It's even possible to force overworked, exhausted college students in English Lit classes to read your books and not be all that talented. Case in point: Thomas Hardy.)
When I look at professional writers (and I include authors in this category) the common denominator I see isn't writing talent. It isn't even a desire to write -- I know, it's kind of strange, but there's more than a few of those folks out there.
It's a desire to succeed as a writer.
If you're determined to succeed as a writer, and have the will and the mindset to do it, then you'll succeed at it. Period.
Now, that doesn't mean you can skip working hard, honing your craft or, yes, actually putting pen to paper or hands to keyboard and churning out words. You have to be determined enough to do what it takes. To make the necessary sacrifices. To actually do the work. And, to know setbacks will happen and obstacles will appear and learn to take them in stride.
Not everyone is going to like what you've written. I dont care how good you are. You're going to get some, if not a truckload, of criticism along the way. But, again, that's part of your attitude. You have to be able to take the rejection, the criticism, or the just plain mean comments in stride. You have to pick yourself up and keep going. Because you know in your heart you're on the right path and you won't allow those nasty people derail you.
And that, my friends, is what it takes to be a writer.
Creativity Exercise -- Get the right attitude
People have written books about changing your attitude, so I'm not going to pretend this exercise is the end-all, be-all. But it's a start.
Twice a day, place your hand on your chest and say out loud "I choose to become a successful writer. I have the attitude of a successful writer." This is a declaration, not an affirmation. According to T. Harv Eker, author of "Secrets of the Millionaire Mind," declarations are more powerful than affirmations. Declarations simply declare your intent rather than state your goal is already happening (which is an affirmation.) When you state your goal as if it's already happening, a little voice inside you usually pipes up and says "that's a load of crap" thus making it harder to change your attitude. But if you simply state the intention, then no little voice chimes in to tell you otherwise.
And, when you say it out loud, you're letting your subconscious know, the universe know, and the cells in your body know (because they can feel the energy) what you're intending to do. Placing a hand on your chest allows you to feel that energy. So change happens faster. If you also look in the mirror, you'll accelerate that change even more.
Above all, remember this: Believe and it WILL happen.
As a professional copywriter, I'm often asked by aspiring copywriters what they need to do to succeed. Most of their questions center around writing ability. They want to know how to find out if they have the talent to succeed, or if there's a "test" they can take that will tell them if they're a good enough writer to actually get paid to write.
Well, for better or for worse, writing ability has very little to do with a writer's ultimate success. (Business owners who want to write to promote their business, take note -- I'm talking to you as well.)
If there was a test out there (and there isn't by the way) but if there was, I would say the test would deal only with your attitude about writing and leave ability flat out of it.
Yes, you heard me right. Attitude over ability. That's the key to success.
I know. It's hard to hear. As writers, we want so badly to be told our work is good, that it has merit, that we truly are talented. I'm not sure why so many of us need that exterior validation -- perhaps because writing is such a solitary, inner activity that when we do finally come up for air, we want to make sure we haven't been wasting our time.
But to be honest, it IS possible to become a professional writer, to be paid for your work, and not be terribly talented. (In fact, I'll do you one better. It's even possible to force overworked, exhausted college students in English Lit classes to read your books and not be all that talented. Case in point: Thomas Hardy.)
When I look at professional writers (and I include authors in this category) the common denominator I see isn't writing talent. It isn't even a desire to write -- I know, it's kind of strange, but there's more than a few of those folks out there.
It's a desire to succeed as a writer.
If you're determined to succeed as a writer, and have the will and the mindset to do it, then you'll succeed at it. Period.
Now, that doesn't mean you can skip working hard, honing your craft or, yes, actually putting pen to paper or hands to keyboard and churning out words. You have to be determined enough to do what it takes. To make the necessary sacrifices. To actually do the work. And, to know setbacks will happen and obstacles will appear and learn to take them in stride.
Not everyone is going to like what you've written. I dont care how good you are. You're going to get some, if not a truckload, of criticism along the way. But, again, that's part of your attitude. You have to be able to take the rejection, the criticism, or the just plain mean comments in stride. You have to pick yourself up and keep going. Because you know in your heart you're on the right path and you won't allow those nasty people derail you.
And that, my friends, is what it takes to be a writer.
Creativity Exercise -- Get the right attitude
People have written books about changing your attitude, so I'm not going to pretend this exercise is the end-all, be-all. But it's a start.
Twice a day, place your hand on your chest and say out loud "I choose to become a successful writer. I have the attitude of a successful writer." This is a declaration, not an affirmation. According to T. Harv Eker, author of "Secrets of the Millionaire Mind," declarations are more powerful than affirmations. Declarations simply declare your intent rather than state your goal is already happening (which is an affirmation.) When you state your goal as if it's already happening, a little voice inside you usually pipes up and says "that's a load of crap" thus making it harder to change your attitude. But if you simply state the intention, then no little voice chimes in to tell you otherwise.
And, when you say it out loud, you're letting your subconscious know, the universe know, and the cells in your body know (because they can feel the energy) what you're intending to do. Placing a hand on your chest allows you to feel that energy. So change happens faster. If you also look in the mirror, you'll accelerate that change even more.
Above all, remember this: Believe and it WILL happen.
