Creativity in Technical Writing

Life is full of ups and downs.  Right now, I'm having a down time.  It's easy to get discouraged and lose focus - my school work has definitely suffered in the last couple of weeks.  I feel like I'm being pulled in several different directions.  When you have those times in life, just stay strong and keep going.  Keep trying, keep your focus, your why in front of you.  Keep doing.  It may take some time but you will hit an up swing and things will work themselves out.  Now onto school.

I watched The Godfather this past weekend for Drama.  Sometimes when I watch a movie, I get hung up on odd details, wondering how did they do that, why did they do that, that can't really happen.  If you've seen the movie, my side thoughts started immediately - he couldn't even enjoy his daughter's wedding day because he was too busy working.  And then the horse's head in the guys bed - how did he kill the horse with nobody hearing, how did he get in the house, upstairs, in the bedroom and get the head in at the foot of the bed with the owner under the sheets - that were tucked in at the foot of the bed - and the owner didn't hear him or feel him, or feel the wetness until the next morning?!?  I had to remind myself that I'm supposed to be looking at camera angles, lighting, music, casting, props, scenery, costumes, etc - not focusing on the impossibility of these odd details in the scenes.  I've seen bits and pieces, and maybe have even seen the entire movie at one time but it had been a while.  This week we move on to Star Wars: A New Hope.  I'm always up for a movie in the Star Wars empire.  Economics - I have got to set aside more time this week that I have been able to the last couple of weeks.  But I will keep working and improve.  

For Technical Writing this week we are focused on speeches and presentations.  I need to create an event where I will be speaking, and create the advertisement with my bio.  I will have to think about that tomorrow.  The first blog prompt this week is about creativity in Technical Writing.  How does creativity fit, can you be too creative or not creative enough?  Technical Writing covers a wide array of documents from spreadsheets, presentations with graphs and charts, brochures, memos, different types of letters, emails and instruction manuals.  Some of these documents need more creativity than others.  If you were sending an email to a client to confirm a meeting, you wouldn't really be creative - you don't need to adjust the font and color, you don't need pictures and visual aids.  But if you were creating a brochure for an event that you wanted people to attend and contribute to, you would want something that grabs people's attention when they pass by - you need to be creative and add pictures, think about placement, color, font and texture.  Can you be too creative?  Absolutely.  You can get so caught up in the idea of "I need to grab someone" that you add too much - too much color, too many pictures, too much information in a small space and you lose the intent and content of the original message.  On the other side, you can not be creative enough.  You don't add enough visual content and your document gets lost in the volume of what people get, read and act on.  You always have to keep your audience and message in mind when creating any document.  And if in doubt, seek advise from a friend or co-worker to see what they think about your document.  Creativity can be a useful tool when used in the right way.

If you are feeling down, remember, keep fighting, keep going, keep trying, keep doing.  I keep adding things I need to do, calls to make, documents to find, appointments to make.  I get lucky every once in a while and get to mark something off - like right now, I can mark off a blog post from the assignment list.  As always, there is too much to do and not enough time.