For folks who keep a lot of notes for writing and other projects, I recently came across a couple of nifty options from Avalanche Publishing.

The This Could Be a Novel organizer journal calls itself your personal source for your next bestseller. Its 160 lined pages are divided into five easy-to-access tabbed sections labeled “Plot Plans,” “Character Sketches,” “Settings,” “Dialogue,” and “Words That Sing.” Easily stored in any tote bag, briefcase, or laptop case, it’s sure to help you capture your creative gems as they come to you.

Not writing a novel, but have lots of ideas to store for that new venture you’re toying with? Then check out the Big Ideas organizer journal. Like its counterpart, it features 160 lined pages and a storage pocket. Its five sections are called “Big Ideas,” “Fine-tuned ideas–with Action Plans,” “Sketches,” “Inspiration,” and “Notes.”

Both retail for $13.95 (U.S.), and can be purchased from your local bookstore (you might have to have them special ordered) or directly from Avalanche Publishing.

A fledgling technical writer named Jara wrote into I’d Rather Be Writing about a common Catch-22 situation faced by anyone wanting to get professional experience in writing…I need experience to get a job, but I can’t get a job without experience.

Tom Johnson suggested a good place to start might be writing documentation for open-source software, including WordPress (whose “doc” we’ve been griping about lately).

I always suggest the non-profit sector. Although any work you do is likely to be non-paying (or really low-paying), this work is likely to more easily yield something than writing docs for open-source documentation would — personalized references from directors, managers, and/or coordinators whose lives were made easier by the documentation you wrote for them.

Many non-profits need help writing policy and procedure (P&P) manuals, training materials for staff and volunteers, educational materials for the agency’s target community, and so forth. I’ve occasionally run across non-profits who needed documentation written for Web-based or client software applications that were being custom developed, or customized, for them.

Some sites that let you search nationally or globally for opportunities include:

• Volunteer Match
• the United Way
• creativePAW
• Network for Good

Also do a search on “volunteer opportunities” within your geographical area to find something closer to home. There are many locally run databases.

Many of these same non-profits need a hand with public relations, marketing communications, Web site content, grant writing, newsletters, annual reports, and more.

You never know where your work will lead you…

Earlier this week, I saw the following comment on the Twitter sidebar for I’d Rather Be Writing:

Nobody seems to worried about documentation up until the release. Then, when users can’t figure it out, all eyes turn to documentation.

His comment made me think of something that a lead developer said at a previous job:

Tech writers are a lot like airplane mechanics. No one pays any attention to them until a plane crashes.

I’m wondering how many tech writers still feel like this is the case…

Tom Johnson opened some old wounds with his post last week about WordPress’ biggest mistake — the mistake being the dearth of good documentation for WordPress users. It’s another example of how, in mid-2008, there are still organizations that don’t get the value of having a technical writer on the payroll, either as a staff member or a contractor, to make their products more usable and, therefore, more attractive to users.

Tom wrote: “WordPress documentation is only getting worse. Is there not at least a 100 page manual that you can download (rather than buying a third-party book from Amazon)? … Blogger has much more marketshare because it’s an easier platform. WordPress could be more competitive in the marketplace if they simply hired a full-time technical writer to — I know this is shocking — add an online help file directly inside the application.”

I started a rant in his comments section, some of which I’ll repeat here. There’s a faction out there that insists that WordPress (the one you can host on your own site) is easy to use. So…if WordPress is easy, why is there a huge cottage industry of independent geeks and pros who do nothing but set up, extend, and troubleshoot WordPress for everyone else? If it’s so easy, how come some of these people get away, repeatedly, with charging folks $400 or more just to upgrade someone else’s WordPress blog to 2.5?

Because it’s NOT.

I’m technically competent. I can replace a motherboard, install a second internal hard drive, set up a wireless network, put up a Web site, even do a little JavaScript (even though I hate it). I can do most anything with good documentation. But I find standalone WordPress to be obtuse. The scads of WP plug-ins make it difficult to tell what you really need, at minimum, unless you want to make learning about WordPress your new hobby…which I don’t. The so-called documentation makes it worse

The WP documentation needs to be better, as does the documentation for the plug-ins. The widespread use of WordPress demands better user support — a level that can’t be obtained by volunteers who write when they have the time. It requires a dedicated effort by a dedicated staff that works together to create a uniform documentation set. And if WordPress does, indeed, now have $29 million in funding, they can darn well afford a couple of technical writers.

Tech writers on the STC Lone Writer SIG listserv were talking recently about input devices they use to alleviate, or to attempt to outright avoid, repetitive stress injuries in their wrists and hands.

I’ve been using the AirO₂bic mouse at work and at home for several years and love it. Its general design is on the order of a mouse turned on its side. It still has scroll wheel and two buttons, with the top button acting like the left button on traditional mice devices and the bottom button acting like the right. It features a hand rest that comfortably cradles your hand while you work.

The product design is based on the premise that the “handshake position” is more natural to human physiology than the “pronated position” (palm down) that is needed with traditional mice devices. In a pronated position, muscles are tensed when the wrist is turned to allow the hand to use a traditional mouse, and those muscles remain tensed for the entire time that the wrist is held in that position. This persistent tension constricts blood vessels, affecting blood flow into muscles. Over time, an injury occurs due to an “accumulation of damage to tissue cells that do not get a chance to heal and repair because we go back and repeat the same process day in and day out.”

I had no difficulty adjusting to the mouse, and within the first few minutes was working just as quickly with it as I had with a traditional mouse — if not moreso. However, nearly every co-worker who has sat at my computer has had great difficulty adjusting to it. The exceptions have been gamers and pilots…presumably because of their existing comfort levels with joysticks.

The AirO₂bic mouse sells online for $99.95. You also can get their Virtually Hands-Free Mousing System, which includes the mouse and either the Nib (PC) or McNib (Mac) software, for $149.95. They have a network of resellers around the globe to support international orders.

I can honestly say the device is worth every penny.

Sometimes, being a technical writer is enough to make you run screaming for the comparable simplicity of a sales clerk job at Barnes & Noble. Or to a cabin deep in the woods of Western Massachusetts.

Mars Girl, a tech writer in Ohio, recently wrote about her frustrations with her current contract — a gig that has not, to date, yielded the professional fruits of growth and fulfillment she’d hoped for.

I laughed a lot while reading her saga — laughed out of amusement, empathy, and commiseration. In her paragraphs, most any working tech writer will find something they relate to. The stories we all could tell would keep Scott Adams in Dilbert storylines for decades. 

Too many folks, not just tech writers, work for companies that seem caught in an endless loop of misdirection and no direction. They have processes and flowcharts that, while detailed, don’t always reflect what’s actually having to be done on a day-to-day basis…many times at management’s own instruction. This Shtikl comic, I think, perfectly illustrates these environments. The sad thing is that the folks who can least afford to be lost are the same ones who are lost…and clueless about the fact that they are. 

Similarly, there’s the environments where there actually is a direction…it just seems to take unnecessarily long to get from Point A to Point B. I call it management by cowpath. If you ever read the old “Family Circus” cartoons, you can probably remember the circuituous paths home that Billy would take from school or Jeffy would take from a friend’s house. A Brevity comic strip used a tumbleweed and a flock of sheep for its metaphor; coming to the top of a hill, the sheep leading a flock of hundreds says, while looking at what was in front of them for presumably miles, “Oh brother, we’ve been following a tumbleweed this whole time.” You know you’re headed somewhere. Eventually.