How did I get here?

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So, how did I get here anyway?

That is a question I have asked myself many times since I left the newspaper industry in 1998, and I wonder about it even more lately since being laid off two weeks ago.

How did I wind up in this situation, basically starting over — again — at the age of 48?

From the time I was a junior in high school all I ever wanted to be was a sports writer (thank you, Mrs. Hartigan).

That is how things started out for me. In high school as a kid learning how to write, in college as sports editor of my school paper (where I first used ‘Valentine’s Views’ to identify my work) and as a freelancer covering high school events for local papers. My first three full-time newspaper jobs were either as a sports reporter or sports editor at various local newspapers.

I thought that, eventually, I would be a big shot reporter or columnist for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe or one of the other big-time newspapers. I was going to be a big deal.

Then everything went awry. Circumstances took me away from sports (thanks for nothing, Terry Brennan, you arm-twisting son of a bitch!) and eventually led me out of the newspaper business altogether.

I have bounced my way through a variety of small Internet and software companies during the past 10 years, eventually falling into the duties of a Technical Writer.

It isn’t the New York Times, nor is it really journalism, but it does use the skills I have spent a lifetime developing.

Maybe someday I will catch a real break and the sports blogging I do (Big Blue View, Bugs & Cranks) will lead to something more lucrative than a couple of tanks of gas each month. That, for me, is the modified dream scenario.

In the interim, freelance and contract technical writing work is the way to go.

I have been asked several times in recent years whether or not I found technical writing to be satisfying considering that it was not my original chosen career.

The answer is yes, without doubt.

Technical writing is journalism packaged in a different box. All of the skills I have spent a lifetime developing still apply.

• You have to gather information, which can include research, interviewing and actually testing or using the product.
• You have to take that information, organize it and boil it down into what you believe is most important for your audience.
• You have to write in a concise, organized, easy to understand manner so that your target audience gets value from your work.
• You have to meet deadlines.
• You have to be accurate, and you have to copy edit.

All of these things are basics of what a reporter or editor does in a news room, and they all apply to the world of Technical Writing.

I may not be using my editing, writing and design skills the way that I thought I would. Those skills, however, are what enable me to satisfy employers and clients as a Technical Writer.

So, maybe ‘How did I get here?’ is not the question I should be asking. Maybe the question I should be asking is ‘Where do I go from here?’ with this varied set of writing skills.

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Filed under Writing

Tags: Journalism, Technical Writing