---
title: "Writing help is... challenging"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/11/12/writing-help-is-challenging.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/11/12/writing-help-is-challenging.html"
published: "2003-11-12T10:10:00"
updated: "2003-11-12T10:10:00"
tags: ["Off Topic"]
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "God I hate writing help files. I'll never be able to be a technical writer. How do those people do it? There are actually technical writing sites that are devoted to the love of the profession. I seriously admire these…"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# Writing help is... challenging

By Roy Osherove November 12, 2003 In [Off Topic](https://osherove.com/blog/category/off-topic)

**Historical article** · Originally published November 12, 2003; technical details may be outdated.

God I hate writing help files. I'll never be able to be a technical writer. How do those people do it? There are actually technical writing sites that are devoted to the love of the profession. I seriously admire these people. It takes nothing but love and hard work to be good at this (much like C++..?). And all I'm trying to do is make a simple help file on The Regulator. Geez. You'd think I'd have done it by now, 4 days after starting, but no. I only have like one page and a basket full of chocolate wrappings(kidding... we're trying to have the least amount of chocolate available in the house, specifically for situations such as this). So. any suggestions? anyone **else** wants to help me write this thing? I promise a serious credit in the about :)

To be honest, I've never had to do this before. Sure, I've written many technical documents, but documents that say “click this then you'lll see this so click that to get this” are simply ....ugh!

## More in Off Topic

[All posts in Off Topic](https://osherove.com/blog/category/off-topic)

- Nov 12, 2003

    ### [The predictable history of a programmer (reloaded)](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/11/12/the-predictable-history-of-a-programmer-reloaded.html)

- Nov 12, 2003

    ### [Web Designer/Graphic Artist/Receptionist](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/11/12/web-designergraphic-artistreceptionist.html)

- Nov 12, 2003

    ### [Israel .Net user group meeting today - Advanced debugging techniques](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/11/12/israel-net-user-group-meeting-today-advanced-debugging-techn.html)

- Nov 12, 2003

    ### [Creative writing technique](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/11/12/creative-writing-technique.html)


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

### Social

- X: https://x.com/royosherove
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/

### Contact

- Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7

### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/