The Noob Tech Copywriter Diary: Entry 2, where I make lots of fields.

Dear diary,

It’s Monday. My alarm rings and tells me “hey, you know this ringtone isn’t part of your dream, right?”

It’s the start of my second week as a technical copywriter. I’m met with a new type of task: adding some of the texts I wrote the previous week, and more, to my company’s website. You’d be inclined to think this was challenging, learning how to use a website’s admin dashboard and doing stuff “behind the curtains”, if you will. But I’ve been using Wordpress for many many years, so I had a bit of useful prior experience. Plus, UPDIVISION’s admin panel is custom-made and not hard to use, so if you need something cool like this, contact us :) One of my coworkers showed me around (thank you so much, by the way) and I got to work. This went smoothly, apart from my realization that the photos I was uploading were the wrong ratio. And that’s how I ended up spending a good half hour cropping photos. Will keep that in mind for next time. 

Who knew the internet had so many random thing generators?

This week I worked a lot more on UX design in Figma, which one day might ruin my eyes (I tend to get close to my screen and squint, rather than zoom in). I actually found it fun and was looking forward to doing more. And I did: at the end of the week I clocked in about 6 hours making a bunch of things, all in the same day. The highlight of this activity was learning about the impressive number of generators of random things you can find on the internet. You can generate random addresses, phone numbers, car plates, birth dates, you name it. I wonder if there are any tech term generators I could use to make wordplays in my copy. Wishful thinking.

Cue more writing: one of the biggest challenges from my first week got a little less daunting. I had a lot more inspiration to write and more sources for content, to prepare posts for UPDIVISION’s social media pages. I found some interesting, both tech and non-tech (so readable for me too) articles that didn’t seem too hard to understand. I also wrote an article for my company’s blog, which I then published myself. I was tempted to share it to my Facebook to brag, but I shared it to the company’s page instead, where it had to be anyway.

Improvise. Adapt. Take better notes.

Now’s the time for the stuff that didn’t go so well. Here’s a little fact about me: I have a very bad short term memory. It gets worse if I’m listening to someone who talks fast and says many different things I need to remember. This is why I always write notes of everything. But I tend to only write down pieces of what I hear, and sometimes I end up with a piece of paper with lots of random words jotted down all over the place (I wish I was kidding).

I was met with the task of making a landing page. I already knew what it was, so that wasn’t an issue. I was also given info and some links to help me out. However, I completely misunderstood what the landing page was for, and I made several headlines and the first part of a design - just for most of it to be obsolete. My self-confidence started to dimmer and I felt horrible. Thankfully, it was turned into a valuable teaching moment. I spent a lot of time those next few days doing some research to get a better understanding of what I was supposed to write about in that landing page. I was recommended a book about working with coders - I wasn’t really the target audience for it, but it had just the right info, with the right amount of non-technical terms.

Jack of all trades, master of none

The next week started with a good 5 hours in Figma. If my eyes could talk, they’d be screaming. I know that doesn’t count as talking, but I’m just saying. Don’t get me wrong - I enjoyed it, and I was glad to be useful. Plus, I later realized I started to miss it. I really wanted to just move some things around and make sure everything lines up. Even by measuring it with a ruler on my screen. That may or may not be a joke.

For the next couple of days I channeled all my energy into the aforementioned landing page. I felt like I was finally on the right track, and I got confident, until I realized I was wrong. I entered a vicious cycle of writing several headlines for the same section, reading them again later, realizing I hate them all, rewriting them, rinse, repeat. I eventually decided to take a step back and hit the books. As a complete newbie to the tech world, there was still so much I didn’t understand yet. And there was no way I’d ever write something good for the landing page until I did. Thus, understanding more about what UPDIVISION does, and how they do it, became my main goal.

Here is where this article gets meta: among all the research and writing, during those days I started working on the Noob Tech Copywriter Diary. Oh wait, that’s what I’m reading right now, you might be thinking. I had a very fun time with it. As much as I did working on UPDIVISON’s first newsletter, through which I got to use MailChimp for the first time. This was particularly interesting - I had never written copy for a newsletter before, but I do read them quite often.

This wraps up my second entry. I was definitely a lot more discouraged this time around, but I got to learn a lot, and that’s what matters most.

What I have learned

• The Internet will let you generate just about anything
• Do plenty of research before writing, know your reader
• Take better notes during meetings
• Always ask questions if confused

I wonder what the next weeks will bring. Whatever it is, you’ll be the first to hear about it. See you next time.

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