Shop Talk

Yesterday I was making some adjustments to my resume for another job and thought that it would be good to have another person take a look at it, so I emailed it to Dad requesting his assistance.  He kindly obliged.  We ended up talking on the phone to go over his suggested changes and his help was really, well, helpful.

After the editing was done, we talked a little about where the satisfaction in technical writing comes from.  We've had conversations like this before, but the previous ones had all taken place while I was in still in school.  This was the first time where I was a professional writer with experience in the real world, limited though it may be.  And it was a lot of fun.  We talked about how, as a technical writer, people look at you like you're crazy when you tell them what you do for a living; how you, better than most, really appreciate a well-written document; and how great it feels to take a poorly-written document and fix it so that, as Dad put it, "you take something awful and turn it into something awesome."

At one point, I had the thought, "Yeah, he gets it" and before I could say that thought, he did.  It was really nice to share our thoughts and opinions and enthusiasm on technical writing with each other, partly because there are still so few technical writers that I encounter, and partly because it's always nice to make connections with your dad.