Renewed respect

06May09

I’ve been away for awhile, and I’m back with no excuses or rationalizations. I didn’t lose interest in my chosen subject, but I did, I’m afraid, lose interest in the actual work of writing the blog.  Not that it’s all that difficult to write, and as my own blog-boss, I’m not that hard to please… I just got to a point where I wasn’t sure if what I was doing was worthwhile, and so became less and less motivated.  And of course, once you let a practice (which writing, even blogging, should be) lapse, it just gets more difficult to resume as time goes by.

Now, to address the title of the post, what I have been doing lately is writing for hire – consulting as a technical writer and marketing writer.  (I’ve been doing other things as well, working on an exciting project which I’ll write more about in the near future…)

So, as the title states, I have renewed respect for the act and the profession of writing.  I’m surprised to find that during the years I spent in management, even though I was as close to writers as I could be without doing the actual work, I still managed to become somewhat alienated from, and lost some respect for, the demands of the profession.  After all, when you only look at finished work, it’s difficult to bear in mind the painstaking planning and research, the careful drafting, editing, and revision, the tedious organizing and housekeeping, the last-minute accommodations and additions, etc. that are typical of most writing projects.

Now that I’m back in the authoring business, all the impediments to good writing that had receded from my consciousness during my management tenure have re-surfaced; not much has changed in the dynamic between the writer and the other stakeholders in the process, or between the writer I strive to be and my own shortcomings.  So, since this blog’s purpose is to in some way improve the situation of technical writing as a discipline and profession, and since writing is a practice that I want to stay fit for, I think I’ll take up this blog again, with a renewed respect for my fellow writers…

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