You Know You're a Tech Writer When...

...you pick up a book on writing white papers and actually enjoy reading it. About six months ago, I attempted to write a white paper on how Kiva Systems supports lean practices in distribution centers, and I failed miserably. I recently saw a review for Writing White Papers: How to Capture Readers and Keep them Engaged by Michael A. Stelzner on the techwr-l web site, so I ordered it from Amazon. Just reading the first chapter, I realized that I had spent far too much time explaining what lean practices are, and not nearly enough on how we support them. Researcher's disease: the uncontrollable impulse to impart all the information you've gathered upon your hapless reader. Resist! Resist!

Anyway, Writing White Papers is proving to be good reading, well-structured, and rather enlightening. I recommend it.