How to begin?

At the beginning?

I’m at the other end of an experience where my sense of self was questioned. But it was an aspect of myself; that I am a writer.

A series of statements were made about a piece of writing I’d done. What was perceived by the other person as simple questions and statements, criticism and banter was taken by me as an attack because of the manner and approach. I reacted to the words that were said, took them to heart… and things went downhill for a while.

The event is over now; apologies made, no ill meant… but I’m still interested in the way I reacted. 

It began as feeling uncomfortable and escalated into horrible depression (sort-of a contradiction in terms of course as depression is felt to be down and escalation is more of an up-word), terrible sadness… my confidence disappeared, I felt like I had been stripped bare.

Uncomfortable doesn’t even come close.

And now I find myself feeling uncomfortable once more.

I’m sitting here watching an episode of The Prisoner, called Schizoid Man.

In summary, it’s where The Prisoner — number 6 — is brainwashed into thinking he’s another person. This new person — number 12 — is to put “number 6″ (the real replacement) off-balance and replace him. The story revolves around identity, an identity which the man who is labelled number 6 has resisted since he was kidnapped.

Long story short, I find much of this episode unnerving. As I do with anything I see or watch that revolves around identity and having it removed, ignored or forcibly changed.

Perhaps it’s because I’ve had such a difficult time with identity for much of my life, I find any challenge to the person I define myself as very difficult to bear.

I define myself as a writer; professionally-so for 10 years, personally for longer. It’s the one part of myself that’s remained clearly defined in my own head for the longest time. Other than my gender of course — but that’s another story that I’m unwilling to speak of (the reasons will become apparent one day).

But I think the whole “I am a writer” has become the overriding identity, simply because it’s remained consistent.The gender stuff… well, those that know me will know that it’s not that simple.

So when my identity, my writing which I identify myself with so much, is challenged, I…

Well, looking back, the reaction was much the same of the ill-fated Prisoner. I was off-balance, my sense of self and my identity questioned, it set my mind off like dominoes falling, one knocking into the other.

Who was I? Why wasn’t my friend accepting what I was saying. This IS me…

…isn’t it?

Identity is a funny thing. I can define myself as “A” or “B” or even “C” (sorry, another obtuse The Prisoner reference) but am I really any of these things?

Personality, like so many other things, is a continuum; changeable given the right circumstances. This leads perhaps to the question: “who am I not?”

Not even a good question unfortunately. At this point, I can no more define myself that way as I can in the more obvious.

The ultimate question then:”Who am I?”

And I don’t think I’ve ever known that.

I’ve tried defining myself as a gender, but that’s not worked. I am that gender, but it’s only one dimension. I define myself as a writer, but that’s a passtime, a job, a love.

A good person? Well, mostly. No, that’s not fair to myself. I have moments of instability, but then don’t we all?

I aspire to better myself. Now I’m quoting Star Trek.

A geek? Well, I use technology to achieve aims and goals… and it interests me to be sure.

A vegetarian then?

No, defining yourself by what you do or don’t eat is as pointless as the rest.

A happy person? Bland but true. Mostly. Unless my identity is challenged.

But seeing as I’ve now identified that I don’t know what my identity is, can my identity can ever really be challenged?

It’s a circular argument, with no beginning and end; a moebius loop of black nylon, stretching and twisting but never going anywhere. It can no more be challenged than a flickering flame can be extinguished by a glance. It is but what it is is not defineable. I think therefore I am.

And where does that leave me?

It’s kind of odd now I’ve identified the underlying issue, and I realise now that perhaps not knowing who I am gives me the very freedom I’ve craved my whole life.

I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I don’t have to be what society wants me to be. I don’t have to be what work or play or custom make everyone else. I am fluid and can be whatever I need to be depending on the moment.

There are two things to be careful of mind you: first that I don’t just change myself and my mind to suit others or circumstance, and second, that if my awareness of this slips — if I forget — then I may land where I did with my friend: fixated on a single aspect of myself which is being questioned.

As with everything though, awareness is the key.

So you want to be a technical writer?

Well, it pays well, once you’ve been in the game for a while, and can be fulfilling as far as being able to describe yourself as a writer.

When you start on a project, you’re more than likely going to be dealing with software. Software can be badly designed, well designed or appallingly designed (thus making the word “designed” unnecessary).

However, whatever the state of the software is, you’ll always have a starting point, and then be able to further refine what’s on offer.

Let’s start with a simple window:

Okay, simple, eh? Two fields, a button, a checkbox and two links.

The way to approach any UI analysis (or any analysis at all to be honest) is to start at the top and work your way down.

This is called “Top Down Design” (among other things).

The principle is simple: You have the starting point, and you work-out what else you can do from there. Once you’ve worked-out where you go from the starting-point, you analyse each successive UI element (be it field, checkbox, button, link, whatever) in turn in the same way until you reach the point where nothing else can be done.

So from here, the starting point is the logon window.

What can you do from here?

• You can enter your username and password (Username and password fields)
• You can click login (login button)
• You can click Remember Me (remember me checkbox)
• You can go back to the website you came from (Back to Cake o’clock)
• You can request a new password  (Lost your password?)

So that’s five things on this little window. All of them can be used to form procedures — ordered lists of steps to achieve a particular goal — for example, Logging into your WordPress Blog, Obtaining a new password, etc.

Oh, and one last thing: never let anyone tell you that you can’t be a technical writer because you don’t know some bizarre piece of software (eg, Adobe distiller, Robohelp X5, and the pox of tools, Framemaker). The first and foremost skill of being a technical writer — or any writer for that matter — is the ability to write. And you’d be amazed at the number of people in the world who can’t string a coherent sentence together.

Or maybe you won’t…

10 golden rules of Technical Writing

1. Get to the point as clearly and distinctly as possible (ie. No flowery prose; it’s information not marketing material). Short and Sweet Keeps It Neat (SSKIN)

2. Procedural material is structured thus: Task, Location, Operation (eg. To create a message, in the Gmail window, click Compose Mail).

3. If it’s Online you don’t stick a bazillion screenshots inamongst the procedures; it’s distracting and makes the thing hard to read. If it’s print docs, then you’ll have to compromise.

4. Try, whereever possible, to separate explanations of windows from the procedures to operate them, this way procedures can be used to construct complete tasks.

5. What’s a Task, you ask? A Task is a collection of procedures which occur throughout an application or programme to achieve a particular goal. (eg. To send a message in Gmail, you don’t just jump in with “Click Compose Mail”. You have to first open the site, then logon, then Compose Mail; 3 procedures in all).

6. No UI, No Documentation, it’s that simple. It is ultimately impossible to construct accurate documentation unless you’ve got the User Interface. Those that say you can are idiots. The logic is simple: they think their specifications are perfect and will be translated directly in to the programme. The truth is that the specifications are rarely translated in an identical manner. Therefore lots of time can be lost documenting from Specs, then re-jigged when the actual application comes through. Also, specifications are far too complicated and often include useless information.

7. Know Your Audience. Users don’t care that the application is written in Perl with PHP5 and a SQL-Server 2003 back-end database, therefore don’t add such technical jiggery-pokery to user documents. Technical documents, however, probably need information like this.

8. I forget what 8 was for.

9. Hardcore knowledge of databases, programming languages, test-scripting and anything else are not required to write documentation about a programmes. They can help but are more likely to complicate issues

10. It’s always nice to have a Table of Definitions/Terms somewhere in the docs, to cover-off all those annoying acronyms.