How I overcame my fear of technical writing and landed a job at freeCodeCamp

If you had asked me in June of 2020 if I would become a professional technical writer, I would have never believed you.

Before the pandemic, I was a professional classical musician spending all of my time performing, recording and teaching.

But the pandemic introduced me to the world of programming and it has been a great journey so far.

This life of being a developer and technical writer was a complete surprise to me but an unexpected blessing.

As of today, I have had 60 articles published on freeCodeCamp News.

But how did I wind up at freeCodeCamp?
And why did I initially say no to getting paid to write articles?

Where it all began

Photo by Maxime Horlaville on Unsplash

When the pandemic hit in March of 2020, all of my performances, conferences and teaching engagements were cancelled.

It was really devastating to go from a completely booked calendar to nothing at all. The only thing I had left was my online sheet music business.

For the next few months, I focused all of my energy on running the business and waiting for the pandemic to blow over.

But in June of 2020, the United States was struggling and things were getting dangerous.

The pandemic was in full swing and there were protests all over the country because of George Floyd's murder at the hands of a cop named Derek Chauvin.

But there was a little bit of light coming through the darkness.

Due to all of the protests, a long overdue conversation was starting about the lack of diversity in many industries including mine.

When this diversity conversation started in the classical world, people were asking me about information on black composers from the past and present.

That was when I decided to start learning how to code so I could create the Black Excellence Music Project.

During my first few months of learning, I took a few online courses on HTML and CSS but I wasn't that active in the tech community.

In September of 2020, I decided to join the freeCodeCamp forum and connect with other beginners like me.

Within a month of being on the forum, I received a message that changed the course of my learning journey forever.

Meeting Quincy Larson

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Quincy had reached out to me wanting to chat because of my responses on the forum. I was pleasantly surprised to hear from him and agreed to the meeting.

We spoke for about 45 minutes and each shared our stories into tech. He then asked me if I wanted to be a moderator for the forum and write articles on the news publication.

At first, I was a little hesitant to agree to write articles because I wasn't sure what to write about. But he explained that I could write about my journey and the lessons I have learned along the way.

With that bit of encouragement, I decided to submit an application and was accepted as a volunteer contributor author.

For my first few articles, I talked about the best parts of being a beginner developer and the parallels between music and programming.

After a few months of writing about my journey, Quincy approached me again with a different proposal.

Turning down Quincy's offer

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Quincy approached me in early 2021 to start writing technical articles and I would be paid per article. He created a list of headlines around web development and I could choose the headlines that I felt comfortable working with.

It was a great offer and I was honored to be asked.

But I initially said no.

At the time, I didn't think I could write anything of quality because I hadn't been programming that long. I hadn't even hit the one year mark of learning.

But Quincy made a very good point.

He told me that I was a good communicator and knew how to research thoroughly. He also said I didn't need to be an expert to start writing technical articles.

As long as I could break down the technical aspects in an easy to understand manner, then people would read my articles.

So with that bit of encouragement, I accepted his offer and was assigned my first article.

Overcoming the fear of criticism

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My first few technical articles were on HTML tags and the true semantic meanings behind them.

I probably read through those early drafts dozens of times to make sure everything was as accurate as it could be.

Whenever I submitted an article to the freeCodeCamp editor(Abbey), I wasn't sure how she would receive them.

Was she going to ask for a whole bunch of changes?
Was she going to like it?
Was she going to ask me to rewrite the whole thing?

It turned out, that she liked them and the revisions she asked for were pretty minor.

My confidence started to rise, but I was still nervous about how other developers were going to respond.

Whenever anyone puts themselves out there, there is always the fear of rejection and criticism.

I worried if I was going to be accepted by the developer community.

The moment of truth came when my articles started being shared on the freeCodeCamp Twitter and LinkedIn accounts.

At first, I didn't want to read the comments because I was afraid they were going to be negative.

But I was pleasantly surprised by the positive reviews. It was really neat to see people retweeting my articles and leaving positive feedback.

Since then, I have fallen in love with technical writing and have grown a lot in the process.

Joining the freeCodeCamp team

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After months of writing articles, Quincy made me an offer to join the freeCodeCamp staff.

In August of 2021, I officially started as a staff author for freeCodeCamp.

Since then, I have written dozens of articles on HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SQL, Python and more.

I enjoy learning about new technologies and teaching them to others. My writing has also had a positive impact on my developer skills.

What is the moral of story?

Photo by Kid Circus on Unsplash

Sometimes life throws you curveballs and you never know what will happen next.

If it weren't for the pandemic, I don't think I would have ever tried programming.

If it weren't for me joining the freeCodeCamp forum and actively participating, I never would have met Quincy.

When a new opportunity presents itself, try to have an open mind about it. It is ok to be scared and reluctant at first to try new things.

But lean into the fear and go for it anyway.

It might end up being the best thing that ever happened to you.

Thank you for reading my post. 😄

If you want to read some of my articles, then check out my freeCodeCamp author page.