INTRODUCTION

I assume you can already write well but lack the technological skills necessary to place yourselves
in the most interesting and best paid positions in the writers' market. Perhaps you have a
degree in literature or philosophy or history or creative writing. You have more than enough
writing and researching skills. The bad news is writing and researching skills are not enough
any more. The good news is the skills you lack are the easiest to learn. This course, then,
is designed to present you, the accomplished writer, with the technological skills you may lack.

The best paid wordsmiths are fluent in a variety of software applications, have a huge knowledge
base, and understand the internal workings of computers. In a sense, the best writers of the
21st century have returned to those Renaissance days where the best minds were equal parts
artist and scientist.

This course is a variation of Utah State University's twice-annual Technology and the Writer
Course. The Technology and the Writer course is based on research done in the 1990s to
determine which writing professions demanded the best salaries and were most likely to
survive overseas outsourcing. I will discuss that to a greater extent later, but the short answers
to the research question are "writing documentation" and "writing training documents." (NEXT)