Google certificates & Sololearn

2021-07-17

As I have said before, when getting into technical writing, experience is king. But when you might have difficulty getting experience, the next best thing you can do is gain technical know-how. I’ve recently stumbled upon Google Certificates. These are courses that are offered either through Google or through a partnership with Google and Coursera, and they are intended to help people get into high-growth technical jobs. According to their site, 82% of Certificate graduates report a positive career impact in six months, though so far, these statistics mostly come from the IT Support course, which was their first. Continue reading

Stock OpenAPI (Swagger)

2020-10-12

<body> <div id = "fb">Facebook: </div> <div id = "ap">Apple: </div> <div id = "goog">Google: </div> <div id = "msft">Microsoft: </div> <div id = "ibm">IBM: </div> </body> Here is an OpenAPI (Swagger) document I wrote for use with this resource. With it you can make calls to IEX Cloud to look up current stock prices for many different companies.

Start with a good resume

2020-06-12

This post will not get into resume writing basics. There are some great guides out there for free already on that topic. Here I will just cover what is specific to technical writing. Keywords are key According to Josh Hrala at careerminds.com, 17% of all resumes submitted are never read by a human being. Instead, they are processed by an ATS (applicant tracking system), which searches for certain keywords that match the job description. Continue reading

Technical skills trump writing skills

2020-05-30

If you are trying to get into technical writing, you may find it is a sad fact that much more emphasis is placed on your technical skills than your writing skills. It seems it is assumed that writing is easier to pick up than technical skills. Or perhaps the assumption is that everyone can write, but not everyone has technical know-how. Take a look at this list of requirements for a fairly low-level technical writer position I found (really, it was the first one that came up on Indeed). Continue reading

A Letter About Self Publishing

2020-05-15

Here is a letter I wrote in response to someone asking about self-publishing. Josh, I’m glad I got to talk with you a little tonight. It looks like you are on the same adventure that I am on. I really enjoy writing; it is my new hobby, but I have to keep reminding myself that it is more of a marathon than a sprint. I had written five first drafts (National Novel Writing Month), but only one of those did I ever revise into a book for others. Continue reading

A Self-Publishing Guide

2020-05-15

Skills demonstrated: Software documentation, screenshots, HTML, publishing, explaining step-by-step procedures, web development Tools used: Google Docs, Microsoft Word, Photoshop, Adobe Acrobat, CMS (content management system), WordPress Read as a PDF Google Docs I use Google Docs for the bulk of my drafting and revision. Some reasons for this are: Google Docs saves your document every few seconds, so I do not have to worry about hitting save often or making sure I have auto-save on in Word. Continue reading

About Me

2020-05-15

Technical Writer Author of five novels and two novelettes B.A. English

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