It is a thankless job. Your name is not included in the end work. The engineers change the specifications and neglect to inform you. There are a minimum of two design spec changes that come to light only after you have sent your manual off to the printer. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., was correct in stating that Tech Writers must avoid interjecting their opinions or thoughts into their writing. Most tech manuals are bland, boring factual papers.

Why do I write technical manuals? I enjoy it very much. It takes skill to take a product and teach someone how to use it or repair it. I don't write software manuals personally, since I am a hardware specialist. My tech manual writing jobs included training courses for classrooms, component-level repair of hardware, module replacement, and how to use the device. The end audience must be considered in writing technical manuals. Users are the least technical people in general, where component-level repair techs are the most familiar with the inner details of a device.

One outlet for prose is Everything2. I get to voice my ideas and opinions in my writing, so I "get it out of my system" before going back to tech writing.

I love being a technical writer. There's nothing I like better than creating the perfect document. Step after step of "Dispense such-and-such..." or "Sonicate at....". There's something innately beautiful about one's protocols or SOPs locking together to form a crystalline flower of logic. And there's nothing like having a dreaded federal auditor from some nefarious government organ like the FDA come on down, read them, and say, "All right. All cut-and-dried here. No findings on this one."

I would disagree with Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s opinion that the technical writer eliminates all vestiges of his or her personality from their work. I would say that people do put their personalities into it, no matter how they may try to avoid it. A Heisenberg Principle of writing, so to speak. At least in my field, most of us are extreme anal retentives. We love our little formulae, and have leeway, as long as the imperative: "Write it so some reasonably educated guy off the street can understand it" is satisfied. People have different ways of achieving this while satisfying the documentary templates that we must fill out. Arguments occur all the time, mainly about whether or not one should say something one way or some other way, or semantic minutia. Usually in such circumstances, the alpha technical writer (usually either the higher ranking or better writer) will win, revising someone's document before submission, the literary equivalent of a brutal maiming. Fortunately, I usually win such debacles.