“Getting ahead as a lone author”, based on my presentation in last September’s TCUK conference, appeared as a 3.5-page article in the current Winter 2010 issue of ISTC’s Communicator.
Click to download the article in PDF.
I’ve covered lone authors over the last months in blog posts and in my presentation, after which Katherine Judge, commissioning editor of ISTC’s quarterly, asked me to write it up as an article which I share with you today.
It’s a concise summary of my talk, along these headings:
- Overcome benign neglect
- Buy yourself time
- Implement topic-based authoring
- Don’t test when you should be documenting
- Learn to say ‘later’ and ‘no’
- Control interruptions
- Treat documentation as a business
- Make documentation an asset
- Estimate documentation effort
- Plan documentation properly
- Embrace reporting and metrics
Filed under: articles, conferences, lone writer, managing, metrics, topic-based authoring |
Kai's Tech Writing Blog 
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by writerriver, Technical Comms. Technical Comms said: Getting ahead as a lone author, the article http://bit.ly/hsVOhU via @techwriterkai […]
Congratulations, Kai! Now all you need is a movie deal – “Getting Ahead as a Lone Author: The Movie.”
Excellent idea, Bill! I’ll get my agent on the case right away. I can see it already: “The Return of the Son of Lone Author, Part III”! 🙂
[…] Kai Weber on getting ahead as a lone author […]
Lone authors, unite!
[…] Kai Weber’s recent post about his article, “Getting ahead as a lone writer,” in the winter 2010 issue of ISTC’s Communicator was featured in the 31 January links of interest in STC’s Notebook blog. Kai’s post and a link to the article, itself, are available on his blog. […]