With attractive salaries, great freelance rates, and benefits such as the ability to work fully or partly remotely, technical writing is a profession that many folks want to break into. Understandably, it’s becoming ever more difficult to do so as the competition heats up and word gets out.
Technical writing isn’t yet a mature profession in the way accounting, medicine, and law are. Those fields have a well-defined (but narrow) path from university through to professional practice. On the plus side, that means that technical writing can be a great second-career choice for folks who’ve built up their technical or writing expertise over the years in a different role.
As long as you can communicate effectively, have the aptitude and curiosity to learn new technologies, and can explain new concepts to others (especially through writing), you have the potential to be a technical writer. As a lifelong learner, you can become a great one!
Here are some of the diverse entry paths that writers have followed to get into technical writing:
Breaking into the profession is the hardest part, but once you have a few years of experience under your belt and you’ve established a reputation for yourself, you’ll never look back. Technical writing is a highly in-demand profession, and the more experience you have, the more employable you’ll be.
In this section: