Technical writing is not an art. Review on Tips on Technical Writing

Dear reader,

I can say with the deepest of conviction that technical writing is not an art or black magic. It is not like systems software design or programming. There is really no inspiration required. You are not a music director.

Come on, if you know something well, what is the big deal in writing about it? After all, as they say in Malayalam, 'When you have butter, why do you have to keep ghee separately?'

If you know some technical topic really well and if you can think straight. Well this is where I find the most difficulty in people. Most people simply don't know the why and how. They only know the what and can blindly reproduce what is there in books.

Now if you think, i.e., use the brain that God has blessed you with instead of forming opinions based on what other people say or what books teach, if you are confident of expressing your own thinking it is enough.

You need nothing more. As I told before it is not an art.

I don't mean to say you have to be entirely original. Plagiarism is bad though it comes naturally to we Indians because we have very little faith in ourselves left. We feel, if somebody says something, it should be correct. What rubbish? Then why do you have a brain of your own? If you put in the required efforts, you can find out for yourself whether he is right or wrong.

But at the same time, we cannot go about writing only original stuff. We have to gain knowledge from multiple sources, think and figure out whether it makes sense, understand the theme, add a practical touch, pepper it with some practical experience and you are done.

I enjoy technical writing much more than non technical writing precisely because it is like mathematics. There are no variables here. If you do a good job you know. No inspiration required, period.

And also it makes your learning and knowledge of the subject so much more meaningful and well entrenched.

Knowledge of good English helps, but it is not a must. The editors can help you with that. All you need is clear thinking.

What is a must however is practical experience and a practical angle. Unless you are an academic nobody is really interested in theory. You have to get it working. You have to be practical, first show, then explain.

This is something I learnt after a long time. It was painful but I am happy to know it now. You should also go from specific to general instead of the other way round. Give people the reason why they should learn something. Because practical results are always interesting and useful compared to stacking brain with some semi useful information.

If you feel that you qualify the above conditions then you can get in touch with me and I can gladly help you fill the other gaps.

There is one twist to it however and it makes sense. For you to write something meaningful and successful there should be a good deal of originality and experience. Your originality could even be a new angle to an old problem but there is an investment of time and energy.

Most readers don't understand this but it is true. Nobody will pay you 1000$ for an article ten pages long unless you put in lot of effort into it.