Windycon schedule and other things

[ksmith]

Windycon schedule arrived today, courtesy of shsilver. Looks good, especially that last item, which begs for the panelists to meet in the Green Room beforehand to synchronize.



Friday 16:00 Heathrow: Humans: We all know what humans are and how
they behave. How will alien races look upon us? What will they find
normal or strange. B. Johnson, Kirstein, Sawyer, Smith

Saturday 12:00 Grand Foyer: Autographing

Saturday 14:00 Shannon: Reading

Saturday 16:00 Narita A: Character Creation: Speculative fiction has
come a long way from the cardboard creations which populate the earliest
pulps. How does an author go about creating a living, breathing
character the reader will want to get to know and share adventures with?
Hines, Reimann, Knight, Sawyer, Smith

Sunday 10:00 Michigan: Scanning the Headlines: Newspapers and
magazines. Everyone reads them, but some people get ideas for stories.
What can be gleaned from the black and white headlines of today for
writing stories of the future? Smith-Ready, Sawyer, Blom, Smith

Sunday 12:00 Orly: Perverse Implications: In this discussion, our
h/e/r/o/e/s/ panelists will look at mainstream books and movies and
explain the science fictional and fantastic back stories that you would
never know existed. Nye, Resnick, Smith, Gilliam,

The con is in a month. First one since Wiscon. Should be fun.

This was a lawncare weekend, what with moving mulch left behind from ground tree stumps and cutting the lawn for what will, with luck, be the last time this year. Now I'm achy and tired and my allergies have ramped up *whinewhinewhine*. Back to the day job tomorrow, an even bigger cause for whining.

Over 200 words on ENDGAME last night. Lucien made his appearance in this chapter, the moonlight flashing off his white-blond hair and all that.

Much has been said pro and con about NaNoWriMo, the Novel in a Month contest. I entered it informally when I was working on CI, meaning that I tried to keep pace so as to make the 50K word goal. I didn't quite manage it--it works out to 7 pages a day, which is a lot for me to hit on a weeknight. But, hope springing eternal and all that, I plan to informally enter it again this year and use it as a way to jumpstart ENDGAME. My tech writing class will be over by then, and the amount of yardwork should lessen considerably. Here's hoping I can funnel the energy into this %^$#@ book.

*sigh* Want to watch a Buffy episode. Have to practice guitar and get a jump on the homework assignment that's due tomorrow.

And so it goes...

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Good lookin' program, indeed!

[shsilver.livejournal.com]

Glad you like the schedule. The inspiration for the final item was Phil Farmer's The Other Log of Phileas Fogg, in which it is explained that Fogg and Fix are really from two different warring alien species and the circumnavigation is just part of their on-going battle.

[hittite.livejournal.com]

Heh heh, having done Green Room at a couple of WorldCons, I can understand the sentiment expressed... I don't mind panelists being a bit absentminded, but you'd think the MODERATORS would at least pick their tent-cards up :)

Novel in a month is, ummm, a novel concept, if you pardon the pun, but I don't think if it is a workable concept... I mean, how many re-writes can you squeeze into a month :)

Hope you can get on top of the Endgame writing, your fans expect things of you (pesky thing about being a published writer, isn't it, that you have people that expect you to WORK so that they can ENJOY the end product?)

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Hope you can get on top of the Endgame writing, your fans expect things of you (pesky thing about being a published writer, isn't it, that you have people that expect you to WORK so that they can ENJOY the end product?)

I definitely have mixed feelings when, about two weeks after the book comes out, someone tells me "I loved it--when's the next one coming out?"

[hittite.livejournal.com]

What? You mean you can't write a sequel in 15 days? Tsk tsk tsk, shame on you :) :)

[technomage.livejournal.com]

NaNoWriMo looks strange. These day's I'm busy finishing a 100+ software instruction manual used in a course I teach in two weeks. Need to have it done tomorrow night, thus your technical writting course updates are very appripo.

Have a blast at WindyCon - the dates won't allow me to attend. I love living out of a suitcase... like I love elective dental work.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

The tech writing course has been interesting, although not what I expected. I thought I'd be writing more. Instead, we're analyzing documents and websites, defining users and purposes, and formulating questions for Subject Matter Experts. All very necessary steps, as it happens. But not what I expected.

[technomage.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Seems they want you to end up working is a shop separated from your SMEs. Ick. When the USAF does this kind of stuff they teach the SME to do the writing. For more lengthy stuff they place the tech writer in the same hallway as the SME and you can just wander into their offices to ask questions.

Hopefully they'll cover things like active voice, since the biggest problem I experience with most manuals put you straight to sleep.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

This class seems to be taking the tack that sometimes the SME will be 1) too time-constrained to be available for that type of informal brain-picking, or 2)unable/unwilling to readily provide info for whatever reason, from being unable to explain things that the writer needs to know at the level the writer can grasp to being actively hostile to the whole process. I'm not getting any sense here that the writer and the SME are ever the same person. Understand that the person teaching this class does not have a technical background. She's a tech writer, and is at home with the idea of interviewing.

FWIW, one of the articles we read for the class mentioned that more and more universities are now offering degrees all the way up to PhD in Technical Communications. The idea of the writer being The Writer and not the SME seems to be the one gaining momentum. At my company, at least in my division, we've seen issues with people writing procedures who have no experience with the processes they're writing about--workers following the procedures as written are stopped cold by steps that don't follow. I mentioned this in one of the online discussions, and the instructor responded that this is why the SME interview is so important. I didn't follow up with the observation that sometimes it's really difficult to know which questions to ask if you don't understand the process to some extent, or haven't worked in the area. I can interview a brain surgeon and ask him to describe an operation, but even if I get the big things right, it will be a detail here or there that will indicate that I don't really know how to perform surgery myself. In fiction, you can gloss over what you don't know. In a procedure, it's much more difficult, if not impossible.

IOW, the era of SMEs writing the documentation seems to be fading, and I'm not 100% sure that's a good thing.

Also FWIW, we are advised to write manuals, directions and such in active, declarative voice. No passive. I can agree with this, although I have a difficult time NOT using the passive voice in a scientific paper or memo. To me, and to others here, the passive voice seems more suitable for those types of documents.

And isn't this more than you needed to know? :-P

[technomage.livejournal.com]

Well, actually, not really. This is an interesting subject to me. I did technical writing for the USAF for 18+ years, mostly reports to document lengthy (1.5 to 4 years), expensive (as high as $420 million in overall effect) industrial engineering studies. The structure of the reports was uniform, but the contents could be very technical statistical measures that a line Colonel had to understand. It was challenging, but also not much fun at times.

So, inquiring minds want to know, is there actually a market for this type of writer? Any idea what kind of salary ranges?

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

From one of the course articles, taken from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (www.bls.gov/oco/ocos089.htm). Let me know if the link doesn't work--it does work inside the Blackboard platform.

Median annual earnings for salaried technical writers were $50,580 in 2002. The middle 50 percent earned between $39,100 and $64,750. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $30,270, and the highest 10 percent earned more than $80,900. Median annual earnings in computer systems design and related services were $51,730.

According to the Society for Technical Communication, the median annual salary for entry level technical writers was $41,000 in 2002. The median annual salary for mid-level non-supervisory technical writers was $49,900 and for senior-level non-supervisory technical writers, $66,000.

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

WindyCon envy--I don't know that I could think about 7 pages a day, right now I spent Sunday in the #$%@ closet with file boxes. But it feels like something was accomplished....

Goals are good. I challenged zara_elis to a race, her short stories to my synopses, but she hasn't replied. I have been doing the "Ok, got that done, now *this* one next" system....

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

WindyCon envy--I don't know that I could think about 7 pages a day, right now I spent Sunday in the #$%@ closet with file boxes. But it feels like something was accomplished....

7 pages a day during the work week would be a stretch for me, I think. During the hell that was CI, I was happy with 1000 words a night. Weekends were for the double-digit page bursts.

I'm going to give it a shot, though. See if I can kick out the pages without that sense of cottonmouth panic.

Goals are good. I challenged zara_elis to a race, her short stories to my synopses, but she hasn't replied. I have been doing the "Ok, got that done, now *this* one next" system....

That's the way I feel right now. I'm glad this class is only five/six weeks instead of a quarter or semester. I'd go nuts.

Guitar lessons/class/day job/book...it seemed like a good idea at the time...

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

Guitar lessons/class/day job/book...it seemed like a good idea at the time...

I admit, when you added the class, I gulped for you.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

The only reason I took on that class was because it was short. Two and a half weeks to go...

[juliabk.livejournal.com]

Go! Go! Go!

You can do it!