Books I've Published

When I was a high school English teacher I sometimes wondered what it would be like to write a book. I had met several teachers who said that one day they would write a novel, but it just never seemed to happen. Then one day I thought to myself, “Why not stop dreaming and just do it!” You can also view these books at Amazon. The Gifted Series Space to Stand Trivia My first draft of my first book, The Gifted, only took me 11 days to complete (50,000 words). Continue reading

Clyste

Documentation for Clyste I am currently writing some documentation for a start-up called Clyste. The Word doc can be found here. Besides this document, I put together an introductory email for those joining the group. Clyste (Pronounced Klīst) https://angel.co/clyste-social-network Most of you are familiar with social media, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. This is where people connect, find out interesting news, and keep up with trends. But these models are developed from the top down by huge corporations, meaning that if someone wants to make a change, even a small change, there is a lot of red tape that needs to be gone through before any changes actually happen. Continue reading

Clyste Email

When I joined the Clyste group, I was sent an email by the COO of the company. I offered to help with a rewrite of the initial email. Here you can see the original as well as my version. The original Welcome to the community Aaron. Our first goal is 1. To inform you about what we are doing (whatever you don’t understand, please ask questions – this will help us refine our idea). Continue reading

Creating an Online Portfolio

Resources Slides from presentation Handout for Creating an Online Portfolio The best article I found for comparing web hosting sites The top part contains inexpensive hosting plans, with free accounts at the bottom. Advice for aspiring writers This was a letter I wrote to Karen (not her real name), full of advice about what worked for me and how I went about getting into technical writing. Technical writing tools / skills most in demand According to searches I made on Indeed. Continue reading

DebtPayoff

As I was learning Java, I realized I had need of a program that would calculate how much money and time it would take to pay off my credit card. I wanted to be able to play with the numbers. If I paid $20 more per month, how much would I save in interest payments? How about $50? This program does just that. View the Source Code or Download the Program

DITA & FrameMaker

Skills demonstrated: DITA, XML, topic based authoring, structured authoring, single source publishing, computer hardware, research, photo editing, docs as code​ Tools used: FrameMaker, Photoshop, WinSCP How to Build a Computer​ Three file types generated, two conditional outputs, one XML source Windows Directions Responsive HTML 5 (Windows) Microsoft HTML Help File (Windows) Kindle e-book-.mobi) (Windows) Linux Directions: Responsive HTML 5 (Linux) Microsoft HTML Help File (Linux) Kindle e-book-.mobi (Linux) Note: Continue reading

Experience is king

As I said in the last post, How to get a job in technical writing, there are two big issues that you have to overcome to get into technical writing. Experience is king. Technical skills trump writing skills Before I go into each solution in detail, I want to give you an idea of how problematic these obstacles are. I had a number of phone interviews that began and ended with the phrase, “How many years of experience do you have as a technical writer. Continue reading