gettin’ paid

Oh, children, do not be mistaken! The life of the writer is not the glamourous one they trot out in front of you at school assemblies and job fairs. Contrary to what “they” would have you believe, it is not a life of loafers on the desk while you puff away on cigarettes in your tweed jacket with the elbow patches. You will not be the office “wit”. You will not have a regularly meeting group of friends and compatriots at the local hotel bar where you shuffle around manuscripts. You will not run across town, hair waving in the wind of your own currents in the big city, just to meet a deadline. Michael J. Fox will not play you in the movie.

The wrtier’s life is one of isolation, mostly. And being a corporate writer, even more so. In the absence of real human contact regarding your job, you will turn to that most loathesome of formats to find out if your salary meets your work: the survey poll. And you will find that it does not. You think a Michael J. Fox character could survive on that? Come on! He’ll spend that much just on Ray-Bans.

Writers UA publishes articles and surveys like the one mentioned above for corporate writers in the user assistance field.  We particularly liked this article on errors and how to reduce them which heavily cites one of our gurus, Don Norman.