One of the most difficult things for the beginning technical writing to achieve is not something that is actually taught in any particular lecture on technical writing. Unlike style, organization, document design, or technology, this thing is something that must be acquired by experience, or by a deliberate act of consciousness – I am referring to the most important ingredient of becoming a writer, technical or otherwise – the acquiring of a sense of self-confidence.

Over the many years that I’ve been teaching technical communications and helping graduates into their new career, I’ve found that the most difficult thing to give them is a sense that, yes, they ARE writers, not just people who graduated a course. This leap of faith, the ability to regard oneself as a writer, paradoxically is more difficult for the outstanding, rather than the average, student. Some students can complete several hi-quality projects for various hi-tech companies as part of their course training – they can do can do an outstanding job, receive excellent feedback and praise, and at the end of it all, still need to be told “you are now a technical writer – you can apply for a technical writing job and compete favorably in the job market – you don’t have to be worried”. Others, less talented, can graduate with a great sense of self-confidence, convinced that they have what it takes, regardless of any lack of experience.

But there ARE ways to achieve self confidence as a writer. Besides doing well in a technical writing course, receiving a lot of feedback and encouragement, and doing a project or two under the guidance of an instructor, the student needs to change certain misconceptions about what it is to be a writer. Unlike programming, accounting, or surgery, people in modern societies have been writing all their lives. Writing, like speaking, is a basic form of expression – it is taught as early as grade 1 and for 12 long years right through high school, students learn grammar, style, and how to write essays on topics ranging from science to literature. Although rarely do they learn writing to the degree that they can consider themselves professional writers, high school students, and certainly college students, have a good basis on which to build more professional writing skills.

Acquiring confidence as a writer is essentially a process of redefining one’s self as a writer. This requires, first, knowing what writers are supposed to do, and secondly, knowing how they are supposed to do it. This is not trivial knowledge – is part of what a good course in technical communications should provide. The process of writing – what writers are supposed to do – is not just “writing” – it is looking for information, organizing that information, corroborating sources, experimenting with various ways to present that information, revising the initial writing, editing, proofing, and, for many technical communicators, doing the actual desktop publishing (an area that gets far too much attention in technical communications, in my opinion).

Once the beginning writer comes to understand that, yes, this is what I do for a living – all of these tasks are part of my professional self definition, the writer needs to be confident that they know how to go about performing these tasks. This, of course, is where good training can help – the writer should have already acquired the knowledge of which skills to mobilize for a particular task – and writers should have practiced these skills already and received feedback as to whether they have adequately mastered them.

Lastly, it’s important to realize that, since people have been writing all their lives, it is not unlikely that after training in technical communications, a new writer will be able to compete very favorably with even very experience writers. I have seen talented new writers straight out of the course beat out writers with many years of seniority for certain projects – even when asking for, and receiving, the same tariff as the senior writer. Generally, this happens when a company happens to like the sample writing of the younger writer better than the older writer – despite the fact that the more senior writer may be a more efficient writer or one who is quicker to grasp various technical concepts. For some companies, especially those that are more oriented towards marketing, the presentation of the material, it’s tone and style, may be the deciding factor – and this is often something that a well trained, talented beginner can excel in.

The bottom line is – if you’re a beginning writer, think about what it is you’ve been trained to do – and start regarding yourself as capable of doing that for your prospective clients. And if you’re a technical writing teacher, remember that imparting self confidence is the cornerstone of making the student into the professional that they seek to be.