Confessions of a Contract Writer: What We Really Do All Day

kimgullion
Jun 30
3 min read

A technical and Medical Writer sitting at a desk completing their content and documentation project.

Spoiler: It's not just typing in Word and collecting checks.

Let’s set the record straight.

Yes, we’re contract writers. Yes, we spend a lot of time with Word, InDesign, Google Docs, or some niche documentation platform that requires 37 clicks to bold something. But no—we’re not sitting in sweatpants at home, lazily sipping oat milk lattes and occasionally hammering out a sentence between cat videos and existential dread. (Okay, the sweatpants part can be true.)

If you’ve ever wondered what a contract writer does all day—especially one hired through a company like Writer Resource—this is your behind-the-scenes peek.

Trust us, it’s more strategy, collaboration, and brain-bending problem-solving than most people realize.

☕ 8:00 AM – Coffee, Calendar, and Controlled Maddness

The day begins like any professional ritual: caffeine + calendar comb-through.

We check in with multiple teams: maybe it’s a product manager launching new software, a training lead needing onboarding modules, or a regulatory team in desperate need of a user manual.

There’s usually a mix of meetings, content planning, and quietly praying someone else will cancel first.

📋 9:30 AM – Decoding the “Brief”

The project brief says: “Create a user guide for our cloud integration API. Needs to be friendly, thorough, and less dry than last time.”

What that really means: “Translate the mad genius of our developers into something a normal person could follow without crying.”

We’re not just writers—we’re interpreters of chaos.

We dive into documentation (what little exists), review internal Slack threads, and gently poke SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) until they respond with something we can use.

A technical and Medical Writer sitting at a desk, drinking coffee, completing their content and documentation project.

🤝 11:00 AM – SME Interviews

We hop on a call with an SME. It starts simple: “Can you walk me through the onboarding flow for the admin dashboard?”

Fifteen minutes later, we’ve heard the words “containerized microservices,” “zero-downtime CI/CD pipeline,” and “frankly, it just works on my machine.”

Cool, cool. Totally clear. Now let’s turn that into a training guide someone can follow without a computer science degree.

🧠 1:00 PM – The Writing Zone (Also Known as the Brain-Melting Zone)

This is the magic window. We turn research, notes, screenshots, and an alarming number of acronyms into actual content. Clear and structured documentation.

Depending on the project, this could be:

Work instructions for assembling a medical device
Compliance training for new hires
A knowledge base article to stop customers from opening 400 tickets a day
An SOP to make sure Bob from shipping doesn’t keep “winging it”

The key? Write it like the reader has five minutes, zero patience, and a sandwich in the other hand. That’s real communication.

🛠️ 3:30 PM – Reviews, Rewrites, and Repeating That It’s Not Just "Grammar Stuff"

We send the draft out. Sometimes it comes back with thoughtful edits. Other times it comes back with: “Can we make it pop more?” “Can you add SEO, but like, subtly?” “Not sure this is our vibe.”

We smile. We rewrite because it's your document and we want to get it perfect.

Getting a snack after a technical writer and a medical writer have completed their day at work.

🎯 5:00 PM – Submit, Log Time, Snack Victory

We hit “Send” on the final doc. The client’s happy. We log our time. We resist the urge to throw confetti.

Sometimes we’re juggling three projects at once. Sometimes we’re waiting on approvals for things we submitted two weeks ago. Sometimes we’re rewriting a single paragraph four different ways because it’s regulatory content, and “mostly correct” is not an option.

We’re solving problems with words.

TL;DR (too long; didn't read):

We’re More Than Just Writers

We’re documentation detectives. We’re training whisperers. We’re chaos translators, clarity creators, and acronym decrypters.

If you’ve got content to create, and no one on your team is raising their hand to write it (because they’re too busy or too terrified)—we’ve got you.

At Writer Resource, we match companies with seasoned contract writers who get it done. Fast, smart, and with a smile.

So no, we’re not just sitting in Word all day collecting checks. (But when we do, we make every keystroke count.)