Getting Started with Technical Writing

The points/tips mentioned in this piece are my opinions influenced by what I’ve learned, seen, and gotten to understand.

So technical writing…

Is Technical Writing for you?

You probably have come across people on Twitter saying things like:

As a developer, you MUST share your knowledge; you MUST write articles. It’s the best way to grow.

This statement could be right or wrong depending on how you look at it, but I’d put it better by saying: It’s one of the best ways to grow.

I have to start by saying, Technical Writing isn’t for everybody. And people have grown in their careers without it. But it is definitely relevant. It has worked for me. It can, for you too.

You have to know if Technical writing is for you. Asides from the financial benefits, it will significantly impact your knowledge, and you’d get to hone more skills and grow in your career.

How do you know if it’s for you? Now, this can be tricky to answer. I could give tips to help you find out, but I could be wrong. However, here’s the utmost tip:

If you want to start technical writing, START writing technical articles.

The message I’m trying to pass across here is the journey will help you realize if this is something you can do or not. Continuous trials, and if you keep finding it difficult to put things down or share your knowledge, it’s probably not for you.

Writing just for the money?

Heyyy, writing for the money isn’t bad. Yeah, we need to survive; we need to make money. But…

In my honest opinion, writing just for the money at the start can negatively impact the reputation you’re trying to build as a writer. I say this because it’s possible to under-deliver as you aren’t focused on learning in your writing process. You may end up putting mediocre articles out there.

At the start, your focus should be on honing your skills, getting better, and increasing your value. It’s your value that helps you get the more prominent organizations.

If I started writing for the money, I probably wouldn’t have spent time writing for free on my Hashnode, Dev.to and personal site. Writing free on these platforms helped me grow, learn more, and even reach out to more people than I would if I was just focusing on one money-paying platform.

Why should you start writing?

To learn. To teach. To share.

These may not be your goals forever. You may get to a point where you’re only concerned about how much you make, and that’s fair. But for starters, the above should be your purpose for writing.

Write because you want to learn how to write. Write because you want to learn new tools new technologies. Write because you want to teach people how to do things that you know how to do—how to solve bugs; use tools to achieve different things. Write because you want to share your knowledge with other people.

When you start like this, you get to learn and build your writing career and trust me; the monetary side will become easy.

When you apply to writing organizations, they want to see a portfolio. “Have you written before? If yes, show me some samples. Who is your target audience? Backend Developers? What frameworks and tools do you usually write on?“. These are determining factors for giving you that writing contract/job in most organizations. And that’s where you begin to reap from your “free writings”.

How to Get Started

Finally, how do you get started?

START WRITING!!!

Maybe you were expecting a series of steps? Uhmmm no. Getting started means getting started. In some books or videos, you’d see something like “pick a niche you want to write on”. This advice can be helpful sometimes, but most people cannot identify a niche from what I’ve seen. And while trying to identify it, they end up delaying. I believe with time, you’ll get to the point where you can determine what you’d love to write more about.

But what do you write about then?

That’s totally up to you. The beauty of writing your own stuff on your platforms is that you can easily “flex” your writing skills. You can write on anything—any language, framework, or even the administrative sections like recruiting, team management, etc.—basically sharing your ideas and knowledge.

As you keep writing, you’d know with time if you want to focus more on Frontend articles or Recruitment articles. Or you may even want to keep writing on every area you know of.

Some excuses for not writing

I’ve reached out to many people interested in writing but have one excuse or the other, holding them back from starting (or continuing). Let me try to address some of them:

I’m not good enough at writing

Practice makes perfect

Remember?

Your writing gets better the more you do it.

You can’t aim for perfection when you’re just starting out. So if this is your excuse, here I am telling you today that it’s not a problem. Some time ago, I went through articles that I wrote in my early days, and I could find many grammar errors I’m not even proud of 😂

I had jammed sentences, not-so-good use of words, unclear paragraphs that made my content undigestible. And when I compare that time to now, I can see how I’ve greatly improved in grammar, composing sentences and paragraphs, and most importantly, writing clear content.

So start! You’ll get better along the way. Through a conscious effort to get better and based on feedback from people, you’ll identify better ways of putting words and paragraphs together.

I’m not a good programmer

I think there’s also this misconception that you have to be very good at programming before you can write about it. Well, I don’t believe it. I see writing as a diary and a learning journey, among other things.

I share what I learn as I learn. Not until I’m a professional. When I wrote my first article, I wasn’t a pro in frontend, not even CSS. While building a project, I learned a CSS hack, and then I shared it for my future self and anyone who may find it helpful.

Yes, for my future self because sometimes I come back to my articles to learn something I have forgotten : )

So you don’t have to be very good at Frontend/Backend/[insert programming department here] before you can write about it. Those little things you learn can help someone out there who you never believed could need it.

I don’t have time for it

You’re probably tied to many commitments and feel you don’t have time to write. And that’s a valid excuse. I didn’t have much time for writing with my previous full-time job. During the job, my writing pace was greatly reduced.

However, you have to make time for what you want. Unless, of course, you do not want it. You can make out weekends or evenings (as your time permits) to write. You don’t have to finish your articles in a day. You can complete them in the span of a week or even more. The important thing is you’re writing.

(If you know or have heard of any other excuse, please let me know, and I’d be happy to add it.)

Platforms where you can start writing

If you have the time, you can create your personal website (if you haven’t already) and start writing there. Gatsby is an excellent tool for building blog websites, and I’d recommend this if you’re familiar with React. They have various blog templates, which you can use to build your own blog quickly.

If you don’t have the time and skills, however, you can use free platforms like Hashnode, Dev.to, or Medium. I’d personally recommend Hashnode because of their constantly growing community, but you can choose whatever works for you.

Conclusion

Starting something is usually the most challenging part of anything. In this article, I’ve explained some of the things you need to know, like knowing if technical writing is for you, the cons of writing just for the money at the beginning, why you should write, how to get started, and also clarifying why some of your excuses shouldn’t hold you back.

Have you always wanted to write technical articles? You don’t have to keep waiting for that “big drive” that will cause you to write. You can start with what you know about CSS, Python, JavaScript, e.t.c.