By Doug Holzworth, Carolina Chapter Senior Member



I became a technical writer due to necessity, a decision to grow as a person, and sympathy for a dead cat.

All right, I suppose I’d better explain that.

I was pre-med in college, which meant I could pursue any major, as long as I completed all of the required science and math courses. I wrestled with which major to select. All my life I’d been interested in the sciences and took for granted that I’d end up in a science field. However, in a sudden flash of insight, I saw myself 20 years from then: In a lab coat, white tape on the nosepiece of my glasses, obligatory pocket protector in place.

I foresaw myself a one-dimensional person who had never ventured from the familiarity of his safety zone.

I decided to be bold and not select a science major! (Besides, the choice of a major was moot, I decided; I was pre-med! Ultimately my major wouldn’t matter, as I’d end up going into medicine.) So what else could I do? I liked writing – English was tempting, but I finally decided on something far outside my comfort level: Journalism.

Things went fine until my final year, when I took my final pre-med course: Anatomy. In it, we had to dissect a cat. And before we could dissect it, we had to skin it.

I found I couldn’t do it. It was a cat! This poor creature might have been someone’s pet! Someone may have loved it! And now it was a specimen in an anatomy class. My lab partner skinned it and I took over from there, but I had to focus all of my attention on the body cavity, because peripherally seeing its little fur boots and mittens, which couldn’t be skinned, brought tears to my eyes.



The cat dissection was a wake-up call. Was medicine the right calling for me? For the first time, I considered what it meant to be a doctor. Actual practice wouldn’t be a classroom exercise. Muscles, blood vessels, and nerves within a human body wouldn’t be color-coded like the texts. In practice, time would be a factor – could I do what I would need to, quickly enough?

Dejected, I decided I may not be cut out for medicine after all. But I was in my last undergraduate year of a Journalism degree! I was out of time, out of money, and out of alternatives, so I graduated with a BA in Journalism and minor in Zoology.

What could I pursue as a career with this background? It quickly became apparent that approximately 97% of journalists appeared to have criminally low salaries, and newspaper jobs were hard to break into in the recessionary early 80s.

Some friends suggested tech writing. I had never touched a computer, but began reading voraciously on the subject. I learned enough to pass an interview with a start-up and got my first tech writing job. I pored over my source materials and every scrap of tech info I could get, trying to bolster my tech knowledge. I experimented with available systems and applications and read the user guide for every application I was expected to use. I also paid attention to the mark-ups my editor provided, vowing to understand every initial error and avoid making the same mistake repeatedly. Over the years, jumping at every company-paid training opportunity, learning from my editors, and discovering STC and its people/resources, I honed my skills and grew into the technical writing profession. Perhaps because of my early experiences, I find I have a soft-spot for people trying to land their first job.

Doug can be reached at daxiong at nc dot rr dot com.