Our general questions for this assignment are these: What is professional writing? What is technical writing? How do you prepare for this profession? Your responses will take the form of a traditional essay.

To execute your inquiry, you'll go on a data gathering expedition, using information provided by invited speakers and by the writers in Savage, Sullivan, and Dragga's Writing a Professional Life. One of our speakers will provide some information about the UNM major and minor in Professional Writing. Others will talk about what they do on the job. So far we have lined up a freelance science writer and a media specialist from Sandia National Labs. The writers in your textbook, Writing a Professional Life, offer a series of narratives or stories about their on-the-job experiences, and as you may well imagine, not every story teller tells the same tale. So we'll find a variety of responses to our questions, as well we should, given that many different types of work fall into the large category called "professional writing" and into the even narrower category called "technical writing."

Among the most important of the many skills that professional writers have is the ability to gather information, to organize it well, and to shape it for a particular audience. So you're going to use this assignment to practice this art. First gathering and organizing: The information about professional writing presented to you will be quite scattered and will resist falling into categories. To assist you in the organizational part, I offer the following categories:

1. What qualifies as "writing" for professional writers? What does this writing look like? What sorts of media serve as publication venues?

2. What important or necessary activities do professional writers engage in that is NOT writing?

3. How do professional writers learn their trade? Who teaches them? (Possiblities: formal education, mentorships, internships, trial/error, self-teaching on the job, formal training on the job)

4. Who do professional writers rely upon to get their work done? Who are their "co-workers" in the very broad sense of the term?

I'm going to assign select chapters from Writing a Professional Life. Two of these you must have read by Tuesday, September 11. I'll list the others next week. The two readings required for September 11 are

1. Rosalie Young Dwyer, "I'm a Nibbie: The Tale of an Object-Oriented GUI Developer" (page 3)

2. Christine Pellar-Kosbar, "What a Life" (page 133)

As you read, begin jotting down responses to the four questions above. We'll discuss these in class and via the list serv in addition to hosting a speaker.

Here are the additional readings and due dates:

For Thursday, September 13:
3. Alina Rutten, "How I Became a Goddess" (p. 39)
4. Beth Lee, "A Job Like a Tatoo (p. 44)
5. Carol Hoeniges, "It's Not Mark Twain's River Anymore (p. 50)

For Tuesday, September 18:
6. Rahel Anne Bailie, "Three Months, Three Pages" (p. 63)
7. Mark Bloom, "Try and Try Again: The Story of a Software Project (p. 74)
8. Tim Casady, "Tech Writing and the ARt of Laziness" (p. 90)
9. Shawn S. Staley, "Daze at the Round Table (p. 102)

For Thursday, September 20:
10. Elna R. Tymes, "Diary of a Tech Writer (p. 106)
11. Steven Jong, "Samurai Review" (p. 114)