SPEAKER_01 0:08

Hello listeners. If you are curious about technical communications, then this podcast is for you. On each episode, I will interview a guest who will share the unique journey. This is Inside TechCom with Zahara Matavana. Let's get started. I'm honored to welcome today's guest and my very good friend, Faith Peralta. Hi, Faith. How are you? Hi, Zora. I'm great. How are you? I'm doing really good and I'm so happy to have you on my show today. Looking forward to the holidays?

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Yes, I'm very excited.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Yes, me too. So let's get started. Tell us a little about yourself, Faith.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

I have a degree in English composition from the University of North Texas. I always knew that I wanted to do something with words. Ever since I was a little girl, I loved to read. I read voraciously. And I just I tried to write a book when I was like 11 and wow. I really loved stories and reading, writing and words and grammar, all that good stuff. Although I didn't really have a plan in terms of what I wanted to do. I think a lot of people who get degrees in English, you just kind of I used to tell people it's not like you walk out of college with an English degree and you have an immediate job right away. Would leave that was not my story anyway. When I graduated, I was working at a bookstore, which I loved, but I needed something more substantial in terms of income. So that presented itself to me in terms of a customer who happened to be a practice manager of a small physician's office. Okay, where I lived. And so, long story short, I got a job working in their front office. And that was my initiation into healthcare. And uh I didn't really do much with writing, really, in that job. It was more just experience. And I did try to become a teacher during that time. I got an emergency was getting emergency certified to teach. And the only job I could get during that certification process was a junior high position at a charter school. And that just did not fit me. It did not work out. And so I actually worked two retail jobs for about 11 months before a position came open at that same physician's office, which I was so thankful for because it was just a rough time. So I went back to the physician's office and I had a different position there. And I did that for another couple of years. And basically, I just didn't know, you know, I always used to say I didn't want to be a starving artist. I just didn't know what I really wanted to do with the skills that I had. Everyone always comes to me or would always come to me and ask me to proofread this or write this for them or edit this for them. And I loved doing that. Little manuals and things, instructions at the doctor's office sometimes. But then, you know, basically I was about to turn 30, I believe, maybe 29. And I was in the process of buying my home, my little condo. And I needed a more substantial income. And as you can imagine, a small physician's office doesn't have a lot of open positions. So basically, I continued the healthcare industry, but due to the kindness of my one of the physicians that I was employed for, her husband worked for the company that I now work for to get me an interview with a certain team. And so I entered this whole world of IT, you know, technology, stuff like that. And so I worked for a couple different teams there. And the guy, the man who got me the interview, once I hired, he introduced me to the documentation manager at the company. I see. Because his his wife and also the other physician both told me, you know, you really need to be writing, you need to be doing something with your writing skills. And so again, out of the kindness of these people, I was introduced to the to the um documentation manager. However, it wasn't until about six years later that there was a position open on the documentation team. So when there was a position open, my manager on the current team that I worked was an awesome lady, and she heard from somebody else who knew that I wanted to be a tech writer that there was a position open, and my manager came to me and she said, You need to go talk to the documentation manager, like today, right now. So it's these people sort of like ushering me in to the position that I currently have.

SPEAKER_01 4:47

Just on that note, I love how you kind of brought it all together. So, first of all, it has been a long road for you to get here. Yes. So thank you for sharing that with us. And I can imagine what you mentioned, I mean, it resonates with many of us. You want to pay your bills. And I'm in tech writing, you're in tech writing, and we can say that this opportunity, this field provides you with the finances that you can live a comfortable life.

SPEAKER_00 5:17

Yes. Well, it's more so than that, I discovered that once I did start on the tech writing team, I for the first time at that point I was probably what 36? Yeah, 36. For the first time in my adult life and my career, I felt like I had a career. That's awesome. I had a lot of hard days just thinking, what am I doing? I'm just working to, I was thankful, so thankful for my job, jobs that I've had. But there's that, you have to have that sense of fulfillment.

SPEAKER_01 5:52

Absolutely. I think that is important. Not just paying your bills, but you feeling fulfilled is equally important because you're going to be doing this day in and day out. And you have to feel fulfilled, very, very important. And this field can provide you with that. And I think I couldn't agree with you more on that. Uh so those are two very important facets of this field that you bring to the fore, that not only does it pay your bills, but it can also be a fulfilling and a long, long-term rewarding career if you so decide.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

Yes. And for me particularly, it satiated all these different things I was interested in. You know, I love to, I do like to teach. I didn't, I'm not cut out for junior high at a charter school. I'm just, I don't know, I'm just not built for that. Maybe not junior anywhere. I don't know. But I get to do that with tech writing. I love to help customers. My background in customer service working at the bookstore all those years, I love helping people. And I get to do that with tech writing. I love to research. And even though I'm researching things that are complicated and at first tie my brain up in knots, it's so fun to be able to learn these complicated things and then help other people understand them. So it satiates these different facets of my personality all in one job. And I think I never really realized that that was possible, that tech writing was an option. I always thought, well, degree in English, I gotta write a novel, or I gotta, and that just that never happened. I never really wanted to devote myself to that because I didn't know what stories I had in my head.

SPEAKER_01 7:24

Interestingly, I share a very similar, I mean, my background is very similar to what you're sharing with me, with that English literature. I also have a degree in English literature, an undergrad. And it was the same challenge. I'm not a creative writer. So although I had this degree, I didn't know what to do with it. So I didn't walk out with a profession in mind.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

Right.

SPEAKER_01 7:47

So that is actually a beauty, I think. The beauty about it, that it has given you a skill that you don't know where you're going to use. Yes. Yes. Is that a good or a bad thing? I think that's for another day. But I think it this could resonate with a lot of listeners out there who may have a degree, especially those who are career changers, who have who may be, who may have done journalism or some sort of creative writing. What can you do with that? How can I take this forward? And what you're sharing with us is that exactly, you're kind of providing an insight into how you did it.

SPEAKER_00 8:21

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 8:22

My second question, my leading question to you was going to be well, how did everything that you do transfer to what you're doing in technical writing? And you already answered that question, the psychology that you would require to be a technical writer, researching, teaching, learning, all this is happening on the job. And you bring that to your day-to-day, you've got to be curious because you're writing about new technology every day. There is that support element to it, right? Because you're thinking about your user, about your customer. How do I empathize with them? Yes. So this is a great feel for somebody who's thinking about changing from another career. And if you have any of these skill sets, then you've already kind of been grooming to become a technical writer. Yes, of course, you have to be able to write. And writing requires it's not creative writing. So although we've been taught how to write creatively, technical writing is anything but creative writing. Exactly. It's a different mindset.

SPEAKER_00 9:22

It is. And that's one of the challenges. When I initially started on the tech writing team, everybody was so encouraging. I mean, I had to take writing tests and things like that. So they were, they were like, oh, you, you know, you you can do this, you've got it, you've got it. But I still had to find my voice as a technical writer. And it was almost inverse from being a creative writer. Creative writing, your voices, the possibilities are, you know, so endless. But with tech writing, I kind of had to hone my voice. I love that. Thinking from a technical perspective and trying to understand our customers' perspective and put myself in their shoes in a different way than physically helping them, which was my experience before.

SPEAKER_01 10:04

So, Faith, you were mentioning that right, the perspective, the mindset that you had to develop, where it is kind of the opposite of creative writing. In your words, the inverse. And you had to tone down how you would think as a writer, because there's more freedom when you're thinking as a creative writer. Yes. And there is an audience, but it's a very different kind of audience. They're looking for your creative side. As a technical writer, they're not customer is not interested in what you're thinking.

SPEAKER_00 10:34

Exactly. They don't want to relate to the world through my creativity. They want to learn how to do this certain thing. And so, like I said, I had to just sort of hone my voice into a technical writing mindset. And that was at first a little difficult for me. Because I was so used to doing the opposite. But I mean, once you kind of figure out your own voice.

SPEAKER_01 10:59

So I'm kind of curious, you know, when you said that you had to kind of hone down your voice, is there anything specific that you did that you could share with our audience that could help them? The steps that you took or any strategies that you applied that could help us?

SPEAKER_00 11:15

Yeah, well, it's the same as it is with creative writing. One of my professors told me one time, if you want to learn how to write, read. So I started reading all the techcom blogs I could find, and I would look up online help guides for other companies to see how they were writing and what it looked like so that I could start to become familiar with what a tech writing voice looks like. Also the documents I inherited going through those and basically just trying to learn to immerse myself in other people's tech writing so that I could learn how to have my own voice there.

SPEAKER_01 11:53

Makes sense. That uh definitely makes sense. So the question that comes to my mind is, you know, you've mentioned our fascinating backstory on how you came to be a technical writer. But in each of those little snippets that you shared with us, I'm curious, did you were you already comfortable with technology? Or is that something that you had to also work on besides just writing? How do you shift your mindset from creative to technical?

SPEAKER_00 12:20

Well, my experience is that I was one of those people who always thought, well, I'm really good at English and I'm really bad at math. So anything science, math related, I'm just lull. And once I joined the company that I joined, I've had to learn how to be technical. And so I just made myself do it. I mean, I if I didn't understand something, I would go talk to somebody until I did. And it was difficult because a lot of times someone like me, people who are very technical, when they someone explained it to me one time, like it's like you're asking them a question about addition and they're answering you with long division uh rhetoric. And I was like, exactly. So but I just kept I call it pulling myself up by the bootstraps. I just I wanted to do a good job. In order to do a good job, you have to understand. And in order to understand, you have to have someone explain it to you. And thankfully, everybody at the company that I work at has been just so nice and patient and kind. And so it's been a process of I hit a wall, I gotta somehow get through that wall. So I go talk to somebody until I can understand it. And interestingly enough, in one of the positions that I held, I had to test these development, uh, development uh what were they doing there? Or these engineers, like formula things, I can't even remember what they're called now. And once I learned how to do that, it was like something clicked in my brain and I thought, oh my gosh, I can do this. This whole time I thought I'm just, you know, math deficient because I had to take so many remedial math classes. But really and truly, it it awakened a part or opened a part of my brain that I I didn't know that I had, which was really fun. I was like, I can, I can be technical, I can do this.

SPEAKER_01 13:56

I mean, again, as you were sharing your whole process, I could say that you're pretty much sharing my story out there because to a large extent, that's the mindset I came with too, that I'm I cannot be technical. You know, you have this fear that can sometimes hold you back. And what you just shared was that you bootstrap and you ask the questions, you should never shy away from that. And I think that's something very important that we have to remember that when you come out of school, you're not going to know all the answers, right? You're going to constantly keep learning. And you have a community out there that you can rely on and you just have to ask. Yes. And like I loved your analogy. You were asking for addition and they were giving you the long division. But but that is true. And then, but what that does is it it equips you to ask questions, to dive deeper. It's okay. It's okay. So what if that is the scenario, but you will get there. Yeah. If somebody starts with the long division, you say, Well, I want to get there, but can you come down to my level? So it just forcing you to ask the right questions. That's another kind of a part of the grain that you have to grow. You're not going to get the answers you're looking for.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

Right. Well, and up to that point in school, if I didn't understand something, I never would ask. I was too shy. So I just tried to figure it out myself, and I didn't always, unless I had a really good teacher. But in this scenario, I liked my job. I wanted to keep my job. So I had to know. I had to figure it out. I had to ask questions. And oftentimes it was a matter of just getting up and going and talking to people. I would get it from my desk and I would be this dread, like, oh man, this is gonna be this is gonna hurt. But it's okay. I would work through the the confusion and and understand it a little bit better usually when I left.

SPEAKER_01 15:39

So let me ask you this. Do you still have that dread or are are you able to more confidently approach this task where you have to go and ask a question?

SPEAKER_00 15:50

I'm definitely more confident. What I've learned is that I've learned how to interact with people in a different way, where I'm the one that needs the help and instead of the customer service perspective of me helping someone. And it's not the same dread as the embarrassment that I used to feel of being in school and stuff like that. It's more like, oh, well, I don't want people to think I don't know what I'm talking about, but at the same time, in order to learn, you have to ask questions. So perfect.

SPEAKER_01 16:15

Yes. In order to learn, you always have to ask questions. I think that's where you kind of bring it home that in order to learn, you have to ask the question. And there are SMEs out there, subject matter experts, and they're there for a reason. And you're not developing the product. So you have to kind of overcome that dread if you're if you're in that place. And we all have our good days and bad days. Definitely, definitely. And as you said, earlier you mentioned that you kind of look at what is there already, what content was already created. So reading those manuals also gives you that information. You just didn't randomly go and ask. You get more, it's a skill that you grow. It is. Right? And you kind of know what questions to ask.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

Yes. I've learned that over time. Yes. Know what questions to ask in terms of what I need to document. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

Right, exactly. And that that comes with experience. Yes. But when you're starting off in this career, you don't have to have that experience, but you have to have that mindset that I'm okay with asking those questions. Definitely. Yes. Awesome. It's really been fascinating. Everything that you're sharing with me right now. You are a technical writer and you are writing documentation. How are you staying current? You know, because the technology is evolving so much. Can you share some tips, I suppose? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:30

Well, I mean, there's two different scenarios. One is staying current, sort of like in my company with the teams I work with, with the technology that I'm documenting. And with that, you know, my company, we use Scrum. And so I attend a lot of meetings and demos and things like that. And that helps me stay current there. In terms of the industry, I still, you know, look at the blogs and I've joined the Society for Technical Communication and I've joined the local chapter here. And I've met a lot of nice people, such as yourself. Thank you. I love hearing what everybody's doing and just participating in the local chapter here and just, you know, hearing what's going on in the industry via the society and via just researching on the internet myself.

SPEAKER_01 18:12

What I liked about your response was that, you know, the growth is happening in these different areas. And again, it resonates with me because that's how I look at it. So very true, what you're doing in your work, what you're, you know, what's happening in the industry outside, and then with the process itself in preparing that content. So there is, it may sound a lot to somebody, but then again, that is happening over time. It's happening with teams. And so the bottom line, I would say, and I would ask you what you think is being connected with your tribe is very important. Networking is an important part of keeping current. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 18:56

Also, I left out one little part, which is sort of the point. And that is connecting with people who are client-facing to try and get a better understanding of client needs, since I am kind of on the back end and I'm not a client-facing position. That really helps too. Because ultimately that's my goal is to try and understand the need and meet that need with the skills that I have. Awesome.

SPEAKER_01 19:24

I'm glad that you mentioned it. It is true that when you're a technical writer, you could be doing end user documentation. And in my experience, it's been that a lot of the input has come from support because they are the closest to the audience.

SPEAKER_00 19:38

Right.

SPEAKER_01 19:39

Now, from what you've shared, you said you're closer to the back end more than the client-facing documentation. So I suppose are you creating more of developer documentation?

SPEAKER_00 19:48

Well, I just rely on the product owners and the customer support feedback, basically. Right. To address issues that sounds like the customer would need to have addressed.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

Makes sense. So definitely. So again, there you've got to go interact and you've got to network, so to speak. Because I think there is this stereotype that technical writers are siloed, they're introverts. And I believe this runs, you know, exactly in the opposite direction. Because if our entire profession depends on the content that is provided to us, that we consume and then that we create, we have to be given content so that we can we can distill that and then kind of export it. Yes. Exactly, exactly. Right. Thank you for saying that. So this aspect of getting out of your comfort zone and putting yourself out there with questions is an important mindset that one needs to keep in mind.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

Yes. Also, flexibility. When I first started writing and having my stuff go out to the teams for review, and sometimes I would get my stuff back and it would be totally edited and marked up. And it I was like, Well, that's what I wrote. You know, in your mind, my the creative writing side of me is like, well, that's what I wrote. But I had to let go of that and and remind myself that this is not my novel, that this is a document that this person who's editing it knows more about the product than I do. And so I sort of quickly learned to let that go because and I guess it was a pride thing, you know. I wrote this sentence and you just totally rewrote it. And well, that's okay. Because they it sounds better what they wrote. And what I've learned in that process is that I learned how to better understand the product, but also sort of fine-tuning my own technical writing voice.

SPEAKER_01 21:45

I think that's again, like I've said it a zillion times, that is so true. Yes. Flexibility. And for somebody who comes with a creative writing background, this is one thing that you have to let go.

SPEAKER_00 21:59

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

You don't hear review. Yeah. It's not poetry class. It's not a poetry class. Exactly. And that's just part of being a technical writer. Like you said, right? You touched upon all the important why this is important. Why do you have to do this? Because at the end of the day, you're not writing a novel. You are creating content that is going to be consumed. And it's not so much about as you cannot write, but it is more about how is the customer expecting this content. Exactly. It is not that you're being corrected for not writing well. So you have to put your pride aside.

SPEAKER_00 22:34

Totally. You totally do.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

I want to talk a little more about this. Is when you start your career as a technical writer, it really pinches you when you get that feedback, right? Especially where you're being told to rewrite everything. Especially if you're writing conceptual information or, you know, if there's marketing feedback, everything seems redlined. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 22:56

And you kind of learn, you know, some people, managers, product managers, they are more of the marketing side. And so what I've kind of learned to do in my experience working, thankfully, I've worked with the same teams for all this time. And I've been a tech writer now for almost six years. I kind of now know ahead of time, okay, this person kind of. This is what this person is looking for. And so that has helped me too.

SPEAKER_01 23:22

Yeah. So interestingly, you know, when you said that, you kind of start thinking about not only your the audience that you're writing to eventually that is going to consume your content, but also trying to understand the psychology of the SMEs that are going to review our content.

SPEAKER_00 23:36

Yes. And what I've learned, like you just said, you know, it's not not that you're being corrected for anything, but what I've told myself is that they have so much more of an understanding of the bigger picture than I do. And the bigger picture is what the client needs. I'm a piece of that. And so it has behooved me. It's behooved, is that the right use of the word? It has helped me to really just listen to what they give me in feedback instead of getting huffy about it. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01 24:07

Of course. I think the word that I would probably use in this scenario is empathy. You have the empathy for the person that you're going to ask questions from and the person that you're writing for.

SPEAKER_00 24:19

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 24:20

So you have to develop that mindset.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

You do. And that just comes with pulling yourself up by the bootstraps and talking to people, really.

SPEAKER_01 24:28

So far, this has been such a fantastic conversation, Faith. We've touched upon some really important life lessons, if you will, on how you came to be a technical writer. To me, this shows that technical writing is a field that you don't prepare for. It's something that you accidentally discover, and it's actually a very pleasant discovery.

SPEAKER_00 24:48

Yes, that was my story. I know now there are wonderful programs at the collegiate level for technical writing and technical communication, but my experience was not going that route. But like you said, like I've discovered I could do this until I retire. If I retire, right? I could do it forever. And I I finally felt that sense of, oh, I have a career now. Now when I meet somebody and they say, What do you do? Oh, I'm a technical writer. And I say that with pride instead of not that I didn't have pride before, but like I said, that sense of fulfillment and actually feeling like I'm on a path instead of just trying to take what I need to take or find what I can find so that I can keep my head above water financially.

SPEAKER_01 25:30

Very true. Absolutely. You know, the fulfillment kind of is very important as we go through our career. And again, technical writing is a very vast field, right? You happen to be a technical writer for a healthcare company, but at the end of the day, you're still dealing with technology. Yeah. And but there are technical writers out there who may be doing medical writing, or they might become business analysts. So technical writing, it is a niche field, but there could be many specializations within this field, within this profession.

SPEAKER_00 26:07

And it makes you look at, you know, I bought a couple of years ago a toaster oven and it came with this manual. So I'm reading this manual and I'm like, oh, that's an interesting way of telling me how to do this. Like I'm analyzing the toaster oven manual. Yeah, I do that too all the time.

SPEAKER_01 26:21

Yes. So there are there are lessons to be learned from all these different content that we see out there. Even what we're doing right now is also creating content. Yes. Content can be published in one way and consumed in so many ways. Yes. This has been a fascinating discussion for me personally. You know, everything that you were saying, I was like, wow, that resonates with me. You know, that's been pretty much, it's very similar to what I have gone through. Well, that's cool. Yeah, it definitely is cool. And I find this career to be very fulfilling. And it's good to hear from other fellow tech writers that that's how you feel about it, which is very important. Very thankful. With that, Faith, you know, in the interest of time, one last question. Is there any advice or any resources that you would like to share with our listeners? Advice in terms of in terms of, you know, somebody that might be in your shoes that you would like to say that uh, you know, could help them?

SPEAKER_00 27:15

Well, I would say to somebody who is in the shoes that I've been in, I would say, like Winston Churchill says, never give up and you never know what's gonna happen tomorrow, and keep on being curious about the things that interest you. And, you know, you don't know where it's gonna lead. But if you're interested in technical writing and you know that's what you want to do, then my advice would be just to stay in the known industry and meet as many people as you can and you know have a community and just pursue what you're interested in and don't give up on that.

SPEAKER_01 27:49

Awesome. I would second that. Absolutely. Being part of a community definitely helps. And on that note, thank you so much, Faith. This has been a wonderful discussion personally for me, and I've gotten to know a little more about you.

SPEAKER_00 28:06

Thank you, Zora, for having me. I've enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_01 28:09

Thank you so much, Faith, again. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please share on your social media to help me reach a wider audience. Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite app, including Apple, Google, or Spotify. Follow us on Twitter at inside techcom or visit us at www.insidetechcom.show for the latest updates. Catch you on another episode.