Warning: Do Not Eat Batteries
Photo Credit: Unsplash, Robin Glauser
by MVWG Member Gayle C. Edlin
After I began writing for a living, the thrill I had in being able to call myself a writer was tempered by the necessity in prefacing the powerful noun “writer” with the ambiguous modifier “technical.” Looking back, I’m certain that my apologetic demeanor had less to do with the reactions I received than my statement of my occupation itself. I presented technical writing as a dull job, one which I was rather embarrassed to admit to performing, and by virtue of my saying it, so it was.
In the not-unusual event that the person to whom I was speaking seemed flummoxed by the term, “technical writer,” the witty response I never failed to deliver was also steeped in vocation-deprecating humor: “You know those boring manuals that come with everything from curling irons to industrial air conditioning equipment? The manuals nobody reads? Yeah, I write stuff like that.”
My problem with technical writing has never been the writing part. I’m a damn good writer and I enjoy it, even when part of what I write includes abominably mundane phrases such as: “From the ‘File’ menu, select ‘Print’” and “Warning: Do not eat batteries.” But as a person who prefers to spend her time composing stories, novels, blogs, and yes, even Facebook status messages, my ability to write creative things became hobbled by my dedication of 40+ hours a week to one technicality after another.
The problem wasn’t the lack of on-the-job imaginative requirements, per se. It was more that I felt like technical writing was throwing a stone across real writing. The act of stringing sentences together in a cogent order was skimming the surface: there isn’t a plot to a technical manual, you see. There isn’t a whole lot of anything beyond procedures and explanations, processes and formalities. Immersion in this kind of writing, while vital to keeping a roof over my head, gave me a sense of drowning instead of inspiring me to swim.
On the other hand, my inability to recite my job title with joy and vigor wasn’t entirely due to my own hang-ups. Who among us reads technical literature unless we have to figure out something technical? You don’t pick up something with a title like, “Rebuilding the Multi-Motor Twin Cylinder Engine” unless you have to. Even in a requisite case, rarely is a technical manual read from cover to cover, and it may never be devoured with unbridled enthusiasm.
The need that technical writing fulfills is not about creativity. Technical writing, as a genre, exists to fill a knowledge gap and to do so in succinct and clear style. But while clarity and brevity are worthy goals, they do tend to strip whole paragraphs of all but the most basic of descriptors. And if the technical writing is good technical writing, each and every chapter will pass without a single allusion or the slightest hint of mystery.
You will not find a metaphorical anything in a good piece of technical writing, nor will you find a setting that involves more than one or two senses at the most. There’s precious little dialog, too, unless it’s something you will find a computer “saying” to you on a certain screen.
So I should be forgiven for having and giving the impression that I found my job as a technical writer to be the next best thing to an actual cure for insomnia. But what is inexcusable—in exquisite hindsight, at least—is how having a work-trained eye for technical detail has also been a tremendous boon to my creativity when I do have the opportunity to use it.
In technical writing, the smallest omission can still have tremendous repercussions. You cannot run a viable piece of equipment—not for long, anyway—if you are missing a certain valve or bolt. Necessary detail is not only important, it is essential. And when I stopped to think about it, detail can carry that same worldly weight in creative writing: what a character sees or chooses to see in a scene can be telling, as can that which the character misses.
I don’t get to develop my writing voice at my day job. If there’s a “voice” in technical writing, it’s impersonal and tends toward the omniscient, lacking any distracting individuality whatsoever. But what technical writing lacks in the vitality of voice, it balances with critical aim. As a technical writer, I have learned to hone my focus in just the right direction and to practice this skill repeatedly. What used to appear to me to be wildly divergent types of writing do, in fact, share the same basic toolkit and require similar talents: examination, intent, and detail.
While my work-day writing does have an emotionless tenor that I would never wish to cultivate in my creative writing endeavors, the on-the-job training I received as a technical writer has given me a great deal. In addition to teaching me to attend to detail and determine which details warrant special notice, I am practicing a certain subtle creativity that I may never have otherwise understood. I’ve graduated from proclaiming myself a writer … I have, in fact, become one.
In the end, what it takes to get to the final chapter has no dependence on whether you are explaining how to use a camera or weaving a transcendent love story, whether you are writing about how to install an evaporative cooler or crafting a thrilling whodunnit. To finish a guide, essay, manual, novel, or poem, the one and only way to get to the final line is to sit down and write.
Gayle Edlin is a local writer who, as the above piece states, spends her working hours writing the directions the rest of us require to move through the trickier parts of life. This piece originally appeared online and can be seen here along with past issues of the online journal 2nd and Church. Gayle is also the author of two books, Here and Now and Between. Gayle also regularly contributes to Coulee Region Women Magazine. You can connect with Gayle on the following social media platforms: gcedlin (Facebook) @gcedlin (Twitter) @gcedlin (Instagram).