Beneath most tech writers lies a creative writer, I believe. And I wonder what types of essays or stories or whatever different writers produce. Today, I decided to pull a story of mine out of a drawer, dust it off, and post it here on my blog under the Thoughts menu. Here’s a link:
I’ve never posted a story before, so this is new to me. But it has me thinking. So to any tech writer that may be reading this post, I ask one thing: if you have your own creative work posted somewhere, why not let us know where to find it? I think it would be interesting to see what words are out there. I’ve seen plenty of procedures, overviews, quick start guides and all the rest. We all have. Where’s your real writing?
Have a great day! I’m off to write something more technical now…
Hi Julie,
Turns out that I’ve written a bunch and then collected those works and published them. When I really got on a roll I wrote novels and published them. All of my work is avalable through Lulu.com. Unfortuntately, life and work have been extremely busy the past couple years and I wasn’t able to do any fiction work (though some will challenge that pieces of my technical work are fiction) but I do have things milling around in my head. At some point, I’ll have to put that stuff down in my computer and then publish them. For the nonce, the closes I’ve come to fiction, is a piece I posted yesterday on my corporate blog. Not really fiction, but a fun story with a point. If you check it out, let me know what you think.
Hi Julio –
Thanks much for the info on where to find your writing. That’s great that you have so many stories out on Lulu.com. They sure look interesting. I wasn’t too familiar with that site; it’s good to know more about it. That’s also quite the story on your blog, too. I don’t how you survived all that chirping! Glad you posted it. More instructions and usability reviews are always needed; that’s one more reminder. (In case anyone is wondering where that piece is, here’s a link.
Hallo Julie,
What a good idea! I love writing for itself, and I guess most technical writers do. Otherwise we’d find it hard to write all day long. I’ve bravely followed your lead and posted one of my old stories on my blog: Chrome dome. I’m looking forward to seeing other tech writers’ “real” writing too.
Cheers
Sarah
Hi Sarah –
Thanks so much for sending that link to your story. Cracked me up! What a great story. It’s definitely easy to visualize the setting. We’ve all been there in one form or another at one time.
I’m thinking that perhaps we should start a tech writer book club. Let’s start gathering these stories & essays or whatever & chat about them. Julio already has books ready to go; sounds like you have stories; perhaps Patty does as well. This could be fun -
Cool idea. I’m in.
A little over a year ago, I experimented on my tech comm–oriented site by adding a category for a series of short stories with its own RSS feed. My updates have been irregular, and only about 15 people are subscribed. But it’s fun to have that aspect of myself out there. I don’t publicly post other creative works. I think you’re right that a lot of tech writers like creative writing as well.
Hi Ben –
Thanks for sending in this link. It’s good reading!