Giving Up Ownership of Your Work

Technical writers write for the people that hire them, not for themselves. This is different from other types of writers, such as fiction writers or even reporters, who have a greater degree of control in the content and format of what they are producing. Because you are writing to fit someone else's needs, you must approach each technical writing assignment with a bit of objectivity.

If you are working as a permanent employee of a company with an established set of guidelines, you are expected to follow those guidelines. This may involve using a writing style, terms, or phrases that you are unfamiliar with or even find difficult to deal with. You may feel that you know a better way to produce documentation, and you might. But that's no matter. You are there to produce documentation in the style the company wants, not in the style you want. If you have style suggestions, bring them up at the appropriate time. Don't wage a secret war to write the way you want. Your editor will simply rewrite your documentation so it complies with existing style guides.

Approaching documentation with objectivity becomes even more important when you are a contractor or consultant. In this case, a company is hiring you to produce documentation. If they have an established guideline, they'll expect you to follow it. If they don't have such guidelines, the responsibility of documentation design may fall on your shoulders. Even so, the company will have its own idea of what it wants for documentation. In this instance, it becomes your job to explain what makes good documentation, and make every effort to meet the company's needs. If you don't, you probably won't get another contract from that company. If you keep ignoring the needs of your employers, you'll soon find yourself without work.

Because of the nature of technical writing, you must approach creating documentation with detached interest. You don't "own" what you're writing. You must be able to alter or change any part of the documentation to meet the needs of your employer. Some times this can be difficult, especially if you are solely responsible for a large project. In my first job, I took a huge part of ownership in the user manual I wrote. It was my first manual and it was 500 pages long. I'd spent 4 months writing it. I had an emotional investment in it. I had to continually tell myself that the documentation was not mine. I wrote it for the company, not for my own ego. I did not own it and had no right to it. I produced the documentation for someone else, not for myself.

If you're working on a piece of documentation and start getting a feeling like "this is how it should be written," then you may want to take a step back from your work and think about what you are doing. Think about why you are writing. Think about who you are writing for. You'll be able to produce better documentation if you give up ownership.