Shanghai Tech Writer

As a technical writer, I spend a good chunk of the day writing and doing documentation-related tasks. You’d think that by the end of the day, I’d be tired of writing and staring at the computer. And yet, I maintain two different blogs (personal and work) and try to write a few posts each week. Where and how do I find the time, energy, and ideas?

Truthfully, it has been difficult keeping up with two blogs, but I have a few reasons why I have two blogs and many more reasons why I enjoy blogging.

I was watching a video podcast of an interview with a video game developer. He said many people have misconceptions about the people working in the gaming industry. People think all they do is play games all day long. The truth is, they do play games all day long. Matter of fact, they play the same game all day long for a year. I don’t know about you, but I’d go crazy playing Cooking Mama or Mario Party for 365 days straight.

So the question is, after documenting, writing, and editing all day long, how can I still blog?!

Well, game developers might get sick and tired of playing the same game all day long, but they still love playing games. . . just not the one they play at work.

In the same way, sometimes I feel bored writing and editing the same documentation over and over again. There are days that I wish I could be writing something else. I’ve been working on this one project for the last few months. I wrote about 20 pages of documentation in about a week’s time earlier in January and since then, I’ve been editing, revising, reviewing, and fixing the documentation over and over again. I’m ready to move on to the next project.

One technical writer wrote in an earlier post:

Your blog can be a powerful vehicle for professional growth and job marketability. And the interactivity and immediacy of blog writing will help you find creative fulfillment in a profession where dry procedural writing leaves your literary talent unused 90% of the day.

The passion for learning new technology and writing about it is what keeps me going. On the side, blogging cures the itch to be able to just write freely and without strict guidelines. I’m at liberty to write about any and every topic under the sky. Best of all, I don’t have to follow any strict style/rule/guideline. I still need and want to generate quality blog posts, but fortunately, I blog for fun and not to monetize or achieve high SEO ranking.

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