I Heart Tech Docs, Ivan Walsh, Technical Writer

Before I start. I was going to title this article “Is Technical Writing the ideal job for Single Moms?” until I realized that two of my friends are male sole parents. With that said, it does seem to me that technical writing as a career offers many opportunities for single/lone parents. Here’s some reason why.

A little about me

I’ve worked on and off in technical writing for 15 years. During that time I’ve had full-time and contract positions. For financial reasons, I usually preferred contract work. I’ve also moved around a bit – London, Sacramento, San Francisco, Dublin, Shanghai and right now in Beijing.

So, technical writing has been good to me. It’s let me (and the family) work in three different continents in less than 10 years.

But, you’re not a single parent?

Well, yes and no.

My better half travels quite a bit on business so it’s not unusually to be the single dad for 8-10 weeks at a stretch. So, I have some insight into the life of the single parent and the types of domestic ‘wizardy’ that’s required to keep everything moving along.

I gave up working full-time three years back and now work freelance.

Most of the projects are about 3 months, some are a couple of days, others might only take an afternoon.

Why not.

Money is money!

Flexible Hours & Schedule

Sticking to a regular schedule helps me to be more efficient. Remember that you’re a human – not a robot – and need things like food, water, sunshine. So schedule break times so that you will not become overwhelmed.

Tip: I take every Thursday after-noon off. It’s a deal I made with myself. This is ‘guaranteed’ time where my mind can totally shut down and forget all the 1001 things I need to do. Thursday seems to work well for me as Friday can be mayhem and the weekends can be overdrive.

Also, one of the pitfalls of working from home is working too many hours.

When do you stop?

In an office you go home at 6 or so but home office workers often work harder and have difficulty turning off the PC.

Guilt and fear play a part here.

“I need to work harder because I’m just a single parent and I have to get this done or else…”

There may be some truth in this but you will damage your health in the process and, more than likely, send out bad vibes to those living with you.

Employment Trends for Technical Writers

This graph displays the percentage of jobs for Technical Writers in the US job listing. Since January 2008, the following has occurred:

Employment Trends for Technical Editors

This graph displays the percentage of jobs for Technical Editors in the US job listing. Since January 2008, the following has occurred:

Daily Life of a Technical Writer

My work day starts around 6.15 am. After I shower and have breakfast checking email, I’m ready to get started.

The advantage of working at home (largish office in the back garden) is that I can work whatever hours I want, within reason.

For this reason, most of my work is done

• Before junior gets up, 6-7.30, sometimes earlier.
• While he’s at school, 9-15 – whenever the school wraps up. Mostly 2.30 in Ireland. Sometimes 12.30. This means I drop him off at 8.40 and need to be back at 12.10. These days I bring laptop and work from a café.
• After he’s gone to bed, sometimes I work after 9 maybe to 11, but mostly lighter stuff like graphic design and flowcharts. Writing that late in the evening takes it tool and leaves me drained the next day. Not worth it.

The downsides are when he’s down with a bug, school hols, half days, visitors, and the other unexpected issues that crop up.

But the key thing here is that I’ve learnt to use my time well and can get in the hours. It takes some determination to do so but I don’t want to go back to 4 hours communtes.

Remote Working

My office has a decent web connection, two PCs, large desk and few other things. Nothing special.

When I worked in Ireland, ny US clients were 5-7 hours behind, so I had to schedule meetings with them for those hours. Late hours for me usually but no problem really as most of the time, I’d be reading a book or watching TV anyway.

Skype is a practical way to make overseas calls and hold conf calls. Invest is a good headset and learn how to get the most from it.

Tip: don’t speak directly into the microphone or the sound gets muffled.

Webmail – another great way to check your business email. My web hosting company does a great job with this and it’s much better than answering business emails via Yahoo!.

Online Storage – I use Xdrive (http://www.xdrive.com/) to share large files with clients online. More practical than sending CDs or mailing out hardcopies. Just stick the file online and they can download it.  Box.net is another alternative.

Managing Remote Teams

Fred Oliveira offers these tips four on working with remote teams

• Trust: Make sure you have, or are ready to build, trust in the other party and his/her/their abilities or you’ll never be comfortable.
• Tell, never hide: If you don’t want anyone to be disappointed or bitter, be straightforward at all times.
• Help, don’t bother: Communication is key, but over-communication is a sin. Micromanaging may work, but only until someone gets pissed.
• Flexible: Setting comfortable values for when to communicate is of utmost importance, because you may end up being either be too lax or too hands-on on keeping control.

Link: http://blog.webreakstuff.com/2007/02/working-with-remote-teams/

Finding Freelance Opportunities

To work as a freelance technical writer you need to have:

Contacts – the more contacts you make, the more work you will find. It’s a number game. Make contacts with people at the local chamber of commerce, small business groups, governments bodies and other places where people network.

If you’ve never don’t the networking thing before, don’t worry, it won’t hurt. Everyone is as nervous as you. Just turn up, be polite, and pass out a few business cards.

Sooner or later the phone will start ringing, “hi, are you the person who writes documents, we need help?”

Try, try, try.

Develop a Portfolio

If you’ve worked in technical writing before, then get out your best technical documents and PDF them.

If possible, change the settings so that others can’t copy/paste your material. You need Acrobat to do this, not the Reader.

Setup a blog – it’s not that hard believe me – and talk about yourself and what you do as a technical writer.

Take a look at these sites and you’ll get an idea:

Robert Wisbey – www.robertwisbey.com

Vlad Grubman  -  http://www.idowriting.com

Suman Kumar  - http://www.sumankumar.com

Tip: keep this site 100% focused on technical writing. Don’t stray into LOLCat land.

Write a 300 word post once a week about a very specific area of technical writing, for example, editing or online help.

Zoom in on this area and focus, focus, focus.

Google will love you for this.

And soon you’ll get emails, “hi, are you the person who writes online help, we need help?”

Takeaways

• Print business cards
• Give them to people at real world events
• Create a website/blog
• Stay on topic
• Update once a week
• Give yourself 3-6 months for things to kick in.

How to increase Productivity

When working from home, you only have yourself to push you to succeed.

Also, you have to maintain a professional attitude when dealing with client, even if you’re in your PJs.

Be careful to answer the phone or respond to emails in a professional way.

Coping with Low Self-esteem

The Lone Parents site offers some good tips on how to overcome low self-esteem, especially if you have been out of the workforce for a while.

“If you are a single parent with lost confidence or rusty social skills, and you want to get back to work or improve the quality of your life.”

A long term unemployed parent after a few weeks of starting a full-time job, may become exhausted and start to wonder if it’s worth it and decide whether to keep going or leave.

Not because their tired, but because they are completely physically and mentally drained.

No one can expect a parent who has not been employed for 10 years, to simply slide into a twelve hour day without it causing physical or mental distress, some parents may well overcome these hurdles, but others will simply fall.

Exhausted from their ordeal many find it difficult to get back in the saddle, some will take damage to their confidence and self-esteem, maybe even mistake it as a personal failing and simply lose their will to work.

“One of the hardest things to overcome is the 9-5 commitment, the having to be there no matter what. Unless the kids have actually left home, they are still going to be having sick days from school. The Easter, summer and half-term holidays make it a battle between work and your parental instinct, to be there for them.”

How to get past this: http://www.lone-parents.org.uk/back-to-work.htm

Get a Day-care provider

If your finances allow it, considering hiring a day care provider.

Or another way of looking at it is this.

Try to connect with 3-4 other parents and see if you can join together, get a 1 nanny for the kids, and share the costs. This can be a real life-saver during the summer hols or over xmas when tend to me mad busy in the IT world. End of year numbers to meet, I guess.

Home Workers are not Day-care Centres!

Avoid volunteering for too many activities or becoming the local minder for kids when their parents have an ‘important’ last-minute meeting and no-one else to mind the baby/scruffy teenager.

Many people assume that because you work at home you have endless time to pick up their children or be an emergency babysitter.

Of course, you want to help your friends and family, but your work is just as important as theirs.

Get this point across as early as possible.

Once they get into the habit of dropping off the baby, it’s hard to break.

Age

On the internet no-one knows that you’re a… Capricorn.

Who really cares?

The point is that if you can deliver the goods online/offsite at a reasonable price, then you will get work.

however, while it’s ok for full-time workers to have an off-day, if you want to succeed as a freelancer, you must be laser-focussed.

And you have to be super-reliable.

So, when it comes to age – and if you’re over 40 like I am – then you may have some reservations about whether 20-somethings will want to hire you.

To be honest, they don’t care.

All they want to know is that you can do the job and not get in the way.

Can you?

What I mean is that they don’t want to hear about your kids problems, issues with baby-sitters, and so on.

Project Managers and team lead want the project to finish on time.

If you can help them do this, they’ll hire you and then re-hire you for the next project.

Can it work?

“I make money on the side as a freelance technical writer. This field is pretty static because of its diversity and everyone needs a user manual, right? My blog is focused on helping single moms learn how to make extra money too. I am in the process of monetizing through coaching and information products so that will be another income stream.” http://richsinglemomma.com/

Key to being a successful freelancer

Single Mom Seeking describes here key to being a successful freelancer:

1  Talk to other freelancers to see what they know about the companies you’re working for.

2  Don’t let one client dominate more than 30% of your schedule. If they go belly up, you still have 70 percent of your workload left.

3  If you’re only offering one skill — such as writing, designing, coding, or consulting — it’s time to broaden your horizons.

She makes a great point by saying that, “Writers who also edit, design, consult, teach, or project manage are infinitely more employable than writers who only write.”

http://singlemomseeking.com/blog/2009/02/how-do-you-make-money-on-the-side/

Final thoughts

I hope you found this article useful. Actually, writing it made some things clear to me and served as a reminder to focus this site more on technical writing.

If you have had any experience in this area and would like to share, then please do so.

I’ll update the article whenever I find something to add.

PS – I had a hard time finding freelance technical writers on Google. I found the three listed above after wading through many pages.

Might be something — for YOU — to explore!

Tags:   career · Frealance · Jobs · Single Moms5 Comments