I am a technical writer. I write about computer software for a company in New York City. Computers and computer programming started out as a hobby for me. I never really planned to be a technical writer. I wanted to be a writer... a writer of fiction. Somehow the stories and books I produced never seemed good enough to me and I never had the courage to submit them. However I did impose a deadline on myself. I said that if I reached the age of 30 and hadn't been published that I would give up on writing altogether.

All of a sudden one day, I realized that I was 29 and I still hadn't even submitted anything. Instead of getting brave and starting to submit stories, I took the easy way out. I wrote an article about computer programming and submitted it to a magazine called CodeWorks. They bought it and even paid me $50 for the privilege. That was the beginning. Because of that small success, I became a bit braver, at least where non-fiction was concerned, and when a programming magazine call Turbo Technix published an editorial looking for writers, I got brave and called them. The next thing I knew, I was talking to the Editor-in-Chief. It seems that no woman had ever asked to write about computer programming for them before and before I got off the phone, I had an assignment.

I also was lucky enough to become friends with the Editor-in-Chief. He sent me tools, books, compilers, and all kind of computer-related things for me to review. Through him I met a lot of interesting people and had the opportunity to do a lot of things I probably wouldn't have gotten to do otherwise, including working for Microsoft as a programming writer for four years. You probably have some of my work on your computer if you have the documentation for any of Microsoft's data objects on your desk. I wrote documentation for ADO, OLE DB, and ODBC as well as the first two releases of ADO .NET before I left to move back East.

I have had a few minor successes with fiction as well, but nothing to write home about. YET.

I'm looking forward to participating in the Brigits Flame community competitions starting with July. I need the competitive challenge to keep me going.