Introduction
Around three years ago, I embarked on a journey of writing technical articles. While this endeavor has been rewarding, it hasn't been without its fair share of challenges. Even today, I occasionally find myself grappling with obstacles such as writer's block or the seemingly insurmountable hurdle of procrastination, which can hinder my motivation to produce yet another article.
Overcoming Challenges and Unleashing Potential
As a fellow developer, I firmly believe that venturing into the realm of technical writing offers incredible benefits for personal and professional growth. Beyond the realm of code, writing technical articles opens doors to a world of opportunities for connecting with fellow enthusiasts. These interactions foster a sense of community and facilitate the exchange of ideas that can be truly transformative.
Notably, writing technical articles can lead to exciting prospects, including high-paying writing gigs. The ability to communicate complex technical concepts effectively is a sought-after skill, and companies are willing to compensate proficient technical writers handsomely.
Discuss 🚀
Now, as we delve into the realm of technical writing, I'd love to initiate an open dialogue. Let's discuss the challenges that you, as fellow developers and writers, encounter while crafting technical articles. By sharing these obstacles, we can collectively work towards finding solutions that empower each of us to overcome these hurdles.
Some questions to ponder and discuss:
- What are the primary challenges you face when writing technical articles?
- Is writer's block a recurring obstacle? How do you tackle it?
- How do you overcome the occasional laziness that strikes when faced with writing another article?
- Have you experienced any hurdles related to effectively conveying complex technical concepts?
- What strategies do you employ to maintain consistency and motivation in your writing journey?
By engaging in this conversation, we can pool our experiences, insights, and solutions, creating a valuable resource that helps fellow developers become not only proficient writers but also effective communicators of technical knowledge.
Let's embark on this collective exploration of challenges and triumphs, aiming to enhance our skills and share the rewards of technical writing. Also this discuss kind of article has some text generated with ChatGPT.
Top comments (18)
For me, the biggest challenge is to after understanding the technology I need to write about sufficiently, to get back into the mindset I had before understanding it to be able to explain it to someone who doesn't yet understand it already.
It's a unique case. I would suggest that you can start by dividing the topic into sub-topics to cover topics deeply. Make bullet points of topics that you learn. Then convert the points into different sections of the blog according to the section.
In this way, you will be able to cover most of the things regarding the topic. When you cover most of the things, there is most likely that the audience will understand the topic.
Also, don't over simply do things as it will make the article unnecessarily long.
It's not that I would leave out topics. The problem is that the depth of my knowledge also increases the complexity of the explanations in favor of terseness. Hitting the sweet spot between a short text and a text that is easy to understand is the hard part for me. Mostly, I try to find beginners to test read and then trying to make the parts they don't understand more verbose, but what works for one beginner might not work for the next one.
Procasination & inconsistency 😗
If you get something without a heart wrenching effort you don't value it that much
And you end up like me
Most of the time inconsistency and procrastination come as you might not know the topic you want to write about. If you have a topic list, you might learn about it and write about it.
I suggest you on using a notion template for managing your topic ideas. I use this notion template: prototion.com/notion-template/Blog... for managing blogging ideas.
Regarding topic ideas, you can write about things such as:
I agree for instance I am continuing a series : intuitive OOP in python and I know OOP pretty well but as dev.to is such a fantastic platform even if i don't write blogs for days , I keep getting interactions and followers which is awesome but in another pov sub consciously it contributes to procrastination
That's good. Converting a single topic into a series is awesome to get multiple articles from a single idea.
Regarding this, I suggest you update the goal if you have anything related to this. Otherwise, I will suggest don't just write for followers. Write to share with others. It will never create conscious to do procrastination. And enjoy the process of writing articles.
One more thing, create a blogging planner and write according to that. Building a habit will help you in dealing with procastination.
If you write techncial articles you're not technical writer. Technial Writer write mostly documentation and other techncial documentents.
There is a big difference between Technical Writing and Technical Content Writing.
Yess. Mostly they do write documentation. But in this was considering it only for article writing.
It's not "Mostly" if you only write articles you're not technical writer. You just repeat what a lot of people new to technical writing believe. They see the term and think it's about writing technical articles, but it's not.
A lot of people that try to educate others and explain what is the difference between technical writing and writing technical articles. You just make people think in wrong way.
Thanks for changing the title though.
For me, the primary challenge is a suitable narrative for the topic, accompanied by sufficient substance.
No, I've only had writer's block once a decade ago when I had a book deal with a major publisher.
It's simple: I don't worry about that. If I'm lazy, I'm lazy.
Rarely, although I've also encountered situations where the audience has landed on my article for the wrong reasons, so they're not absorbing the information in the way it was intended.
Don't worry about consistency. I am not consistent with my writing, but I have had many of my writings elevated by editorial here and on other platforms. Write when it feels right, and you'll produce quality content.
Thanks Joe, for providing your insighful thoughts on the topic.
So, what I do to get right back in the mood of writing, is I try to read technical articles that are sort of related to the article I'm working on. I try to read up as many as I can. The motivation to write grows up from there. I think this might help other technical writers out there. I hope it helps though. 🥰
I agree with you regarding reading technical articles of others. I would also suggest starting something(does not based on technical stuff). As I have seen in my case, If I just start writing anything, it builds my mind to write. Then I just switch to my article.
True!
I'd say lack of motivation. For instance, I had planned that I was going to write and publish an article today, but when I got out of bed this morning, I just felt unmotivated. Lol. I had to feed my mind on technical articles to rekindle the motivation to write. So, I think that's a challenge for me. And I'm working deeply on it. Thanks for sharing this insightful article. You rock! 🤩
I really learnt a lot from reading the comments. Thank you for asking those questions.
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