The Lone Wolf Writer in Context

At the recent Write the Docs conference, I had the opportunity to briefly speak with one of the keynotes, the gracious Marcia Riefer Johnston. I wanted to thank her both for her wonderful presentation and for being of a "similar age" to me. Not having any idea about what to expect, I imagined I'd be the oldest person attending, probably by decades.

Fortunately, the level of diversity present at the conference included a wide age range, so I didn't feel terribly anachronistic.

I also had an opportunity to share with Marcia something of my background and current working circumstances. In most places I've worked (such as HP, Micron, and the little-known EmergeCore), including my present job, I've been the "Lone Wolf" technical writer, the only person who does exactly what I do in the shop. While that makes me unique, it can also be kind of lonely. From developers, to operations, to support, to testing, to management, no one completely understands the nature of my process or my pain points.

The flip side is without access to a community of technical writers, I don't know what's supposed to be "normal".

All that changed, at least in potential, when Marcia mentioned the Society for Technical Communication (STC) and specifically the Special Interest Group (SIG) Lone Writer (personally, I prefer "Lone Wolf Writer" but I guess you can't have everything).

I'm still exploring STC and Lone Writer online, but even the possibility of belonging to a larger group of people like me, and particularly a group of "Lone Wolves," is exciting.

In addition, I'm already beginning to dialog at the new Write the Docs Forum. I know that at the conference, we were all strongly encouraged to organize meetups within our communities, but knowing so little about the technical documentation community, either locally or globally, makes that idea seem incredibly intimidating at present.

I think I'll start out with my contacts being virtual before summoning the chutzpah to make them material.

I'm still sorting through all of the notes I took during the conference in order to develop a meaningful summary to present to the support manager and staff, but in order to flesh out any changes I'm going to propose to their team and the other related departments, I'll also need to acquire a sense of who I am among my community of peers, even if they are peers at a distance.

Then I can suggest how to better develop and manage our documentation process and how we conceive of information. Joining STC and the Lone Writer SIG will make me a "Lone Wolf" among many "Lone Wolves," and as a technical writer within the larger technical writing community, I'll become a Lone Wolf Writer who has finally found a context.