Why so few Engineers are writers

Engineers are solitary creatures. Preferring to work by themselves. So it would seem that they would be perfect for being writers.

The problem is working with others. The term “Engineering Team” is an oxymoron. An engineer is trained to take a big problem and break it into small solvable pieces. There is no team in, break into small pieces. They beak the problem up, then each member of the team goes off by themselves and works on their part of the problem. This leads to difficulties when they go to bolt the project together they find one engineer used course threaded nuts and bolts and he must attach his part to a part that another engineer used fine threaded nuts and bolts on. The third engineer used SAE threaded nuts and bolts on his part and the fourth engineer used metric threaded nuts and bolts. They were all too busy making their parts to read the contract that stated they were to use Whitworth threads.

They were trained to do their homework alone, with no coping from others. Work is just like homework and writing a book is work. That’s why so many people never finish writing a book. It’s to much like homework (and for so many pays about the same).

Now imagine them in a critique group. Imagine an engineer trying to manage a group of 20 or more Beta Readers while remaining an engineer and not becoming a pointed haired boss. Imagine an engineer with two books on English grammar and they disagree with each other. It’s enough to make a logical engineer snap.

Stay strong, write on.        Professor Hyram Voltage