Starting out in Technical Writing - My Story

Introduction

Technical writing, which typically speaks about certain items or skill sets, has continued to be an important way for writers to convey a plethora of instructional knowledge to readers. In this article, I'll provide a brief account of my journey into technical writing, including some of the difficulties I encountered.

First Moves

Looking back, I would be content with the pursuits I made and the roles I took during my time in high school and college. Those were some crucially important formative seasons for a journey that was at the time unknown. I must say, they were incredibly helpful.

When I was a student in high school, some of the experiences I had were around participation in writing assignments like essays, letters, and other tasks requiring verbal creativity. Although I wasn't as excellent at telling stories, one important thing I enjoyed most was cooking up words- It was great fun for me.

In my college years, I participated in a lot of team-based assignments where I either had the opportunity to create the content or interact with it as a presenter or reviewer. I instinctively liked it and they were wonderful times for me, though I never imagined it growing into something as significant as it has.

in retrospect, one significant pattern I noticed was the regular development of this skill as I moved from high school to college. Technical writing found application in things like class assignments in high school through presentations, technical laboratory reports, and project write-ups.

When I made the decision to investigate how technology would fit into my field of study in 2021, I stumbled into a Kickstart program that introduced me to the Medium blogging site. However, I only published one or two posts after that. My core aim then was to study the fundamental of Information technology with a touch of cloud computing.

These modest efforts, even if they weren't initially intended to help me reach a specific objective, formed the foundation for my career as a technical writer.

How I Started Out

It all began with the fact that sharing brings greater understanding, as it naturally stirs up more research which will lead to a deeper comprehension of the subject matter, hence expanding one's knowledge base - this was the understanding that sponsored my decision. In October 2022, I got an opportunity to get professional training in technical writing through the Microsoft student learn ambassadors coordinated program, called the writing streak. It was a highly demanding and worthwhile event.

The experience gathered from the event exposed me to great technical writing skillsets and formally marked my career journey into technical writing in the Information Technology industry. It was a great learning experience with assessed assignments that brought practicality into it. Completing the activity with a better understanding of Medium, I had already authored a good number of articles. Also, I was introduced to the Hash node through this training. I can already tell how awesome hash node is for technical content with my limited exploration.

Challenges

During this period of training, I was faced with the challenge of meeting up with deadlines given the challenge of an epileptic power supply, which I was able to get around by visiting some offices nearby where I could get my laptop and gadgets powered up.

Communication was one other area of difficulty. I frequently used hard-to-understand terminologies. At the technical writing streak event, I was able to gain a better understanding of communication as an end-to-end process through the use of pertinent training and resources. Also, I got I further understood how I could leverage some tools for better communication.

Conclusion

My Journey to technical writing was about me discovering myself in the dark - a vague journey that became clearer as time unfolded. It has made me realize how important it is to always put a brick on an overlying brick consistently, as this is how we stand an opportunity of building something magnificent.