Any of you techies know how one could break into Tech Writing as a career, with no experience other than a very short C/C++ programming job years ago?

Also do you happen to know if the field is somewhat in demand at this time?

Thanks

Are you a good writer?

Yes, I believe so.

Why not write a sample and post it here?

Could do that, but what would it accomplish?

I'm not sure I understand your question, unless it was purely rhetorical.

You don't have to post it here, but someone asked if you were a good writer. I guess the better question is: have you written any tech articles?

It seems to me that this wouldn't be a good career path to go down. In addition to getting boring after a while, writing jobs are extremely competitive. Also, I'm not sure what skill-set you'd be building that would be transferable if you decided to move in a different direction in the future. Being a competent writer is important in the business world, but to get a job as a Technical Writer you'd already be a competent writer; so, it's not like you'd be developing a new valuable skill.

i found a writing sample by op:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/34...at-do-1337584/

i will answer op's question seriously even though i doubt it will be much use: prove you can write by writing: establish a blog, contribute to open source projects, build up a portfolio. portfolio + network = freelancer.

I'm not a fan of using forum posts to measure someone's writing abilities, but one thing sticks out: You don't trust the readers' intelligence. Rolling back over-explanation is probably the hardest hurdle to leap in writing. In reality, you are afraid of not being understood. You beat this by forcing yourself to rip away all the excess, editing your work down, and ripping out the very soul of what you wrote. Here the conversation gets into Voice, but I'll dismiss this by simply stating that there is not such thing as Voice. Understanding that you have no Voice is the second hurdle you'd have to get past.

You stated in that post that you thought about tech as a career and you stated that you were afraid that learning [tech] will take a few years of learning to be employable. Yes, this is true, in part. You may well be able to find a job or paid internship within a year or two.

Go_Blue is correct in saying that writing is a difficult field to break into. What he doesn't tell you is that writing is a difficult field to keep into. There are tons of unemployed and incredibly passionate writers out there right now. Not only are there few jobs available, the pay has plummeted. With tech writing, you are trying to climb three hills: learning tech, learning to write, and learning both enough that you can understand nerd-speak and translate that to some odd mix of lay- and nerd- speak. To add to this, you won't be considered if you aren't *very* good at marketing yourself and getting readership. NO company wants to pay for new blood and work out marketing efforts. I think the better option would be to learn straight-up tech and try to get into the field, since you'd only be climbing one hill instead of four.

Regardless, if you were truly interested, you would not have came in and asked if the profession was viable, you would already have 5 to 10 articles written and posted one for our review. Your attitude towards my question reveals that you aren't a passionate writer, and for that reason, I would say writing isn't for you.

Ok, tyvm for the insight folks. Writing does seem to be very competitive from what I've gathered, and yes Dave, I could imagine the job getting quite dull after some time.

hmm, I thought you were talking about writing manuals, documentation, etc, along the lines of wikipedia's interpretation of Technical Writing. I think that field is less in demand than it used to be, as technology gets more accessible to people who don't read manuals.

If you were talking about writing articles that might appear in Wired or Slate or ****tier versions of the same, then yeah I agree, if you're not already writing well for its own sake then you're probably not going to make it.

Not only that, but (at least in my company) a lot of the written work that used to be done by a 'technical writer' is now done by a developer or 'architect' who both have significant technology/product duties as well.

If you want to get paid money to write a bunch of drivel about other people's work, become a lawyer.