[This is a continuation of our article here]

With many subjects, the writer may consider themselves the 'expert, imparting their knowledge to the lucky reader'. However, that's a trap that even the most experienced writer can easily jump into feet first. As a the writer, your point of view may be limited, restricted, biased even. The value you bring to the article is in including information from outwith your immediate knowledge, and filtering it through your experience, to the benefit of your audience. This will also increase your own knowledge on the subject - a bonus. As the saying goes, if you want to learn something well, teach it.

So do your research. Check trade journals you may have missed. Research at the library or online. And once you've filled a folder with cuttings and articles, take notes on them so you have new and important facts in bite-sized chunks, but it also makes you more comfortable with any 'new' material you may have uncovered.

Also, backing up any of your claims with solid background information will provide the credibility that will help your audience take your article seriously.

Now you've got all the grunt work done, you can make an outline of your piece. Get a basic template together - a simple street map to guide your way.

How Do I Get Better at Technical Writing?

For instance, the 'Hedging on the LME' article may cover 'what is hedging?', 'how does it apply to the LME', 'blah blah'.

Now all the facts have been pulled together from reliable sources, you can get down to writing. BUT! You must remember that the key to successful writing is to rewrite. To draft and cut and re-draft and pare it down until it's bulletproof.

Maybe 3 or 4 drafts will do you. Allow for that amount of rewriting. It will show.

One the first draft, just batter out the words onto the page. Don't stop to question what you're putting down, or edit or move it around the page. Relax and let all you've learned during the research and organisation stages to go down onto the page. The rewrites are for fixing.

On the next draft, when you take what you just dumped on the page, edit it brutally. Take out all the extraneous words, the 'this' and 'that's and cliches and the like. All the lazy structures you used just so you could get the ideas out. This should be relatively painless if you're using a word processor.

In the final stage, check your figures, punctuation, spelling, grammar - all the nuts and bolts. It wouldn't be the first time I've been present during a management meeting when one particularly asinine Director poo-pooed a business presentation by a colleague because they had spelt 'collateral' incorrectly.

If with the above strategy, you experience writer's block - just an inability to get your finger out and get it done - break it up. Break each article up into small accessible pieces, and work on each of them separately. You'll find that achieving little goals along the way make it easier to keep on track to get the full article completed.
[This is the second part of this article. Read the first part here]

Write abstracts, introductions and summaries when you're all done.

Now go to bed. When you take your article out the drawer a couple of days later, you may find it needs another re-write. That's fine, that's healthy. Do it.

Keep the above in mind, or follow it as a guide, but it should make it easier and less stressful for a non-technical person to write a good accessible article for a variety of audiences.