The first tech docs project

What was your first tech docs project? Your first piece of technical writing? I'm taking a trip down memory lane and mulling on inspiration and impact.

My first tech docs project

I did my first piece of technical writing before I even knew that technical writing was a thing. I worked in tech support - our customers built adverts using our API. I realised we kept answering the same questions, encountering confused users (especially confused newcomers to our platform). So I created one example of each of our basic ad formats (less than ten in total), and wrote a short tutorial for each one explaining how to set it up and customise it.

This proved useful! Suddenly we could direct users to a set of standard examples, both in onboarding and in response to help requests. We had quicker answers to questions, users could be a little more self-serve after the initial onboarding, and a few common user errors were reduced.

At some point the sales folks learned of these examples, and sent me some nice on-brand visuals to use, so I could make them look professional. They could then use the examples in demos.

It wasn't great writing. A couple of years later, having learned that tech writer is an actual job, and been lucky enough to spend a year as a junior on a team that believed in training, I re-read my work and could see all the places where I could have been a little clearer, a little simpler, a little more consistent.

But it grew organically from an obvious need, it may still be one of the most impactful projects I've done, and definitely one of the most satisfying.

Why am I taking a trip down memory lane now?

A couple of things are prompting reflection. I just started a new job, and that always comes with the "how did you get into tech writing?" questions, so it's been on my mind. And that first project was ~10 years ago now. A lot has changed - I've changed. The work I've done in the past three years would have been unimaginable to me then (this is one reason I find very detailed long-term career planning funny). But there are common threads:

• Docs that solve a problem (and a deep scepticism towards other motivations for writing docs)
• Focusing on user needs . . .
• . . . but not forgetting company needs.
• And considerable sympathy for the folks working in support.

What we can learn from a spontaneous project

That first project is one of the most satisfying for me because it's one of the pieces of work that most purely expresses my tech writer heart. It's one of the few projects I've done from sheer inspiration (seeing the need and doing it), rather than a more cold, collaborative planning process.

There are good reasons for cold collaborative planning processes. People who are constantly running off doing their own thing and being interestingly spontaneous are, frankly, a pain to work with.

But if you want to see the work you're meant to do, the work that perhaps suits you best, the work that will feel right for you: look at the docs you needed to write. The ones you wrote because (to you) they so very obviously needed to be written.