Overtime

Just as I was getting ready to dive into intensive scheduling (I had pulled out the Physics book last night) and IHIP writing, work gets in the way. At a sudden emergency meeting this morning for which I had less than an hour's notice, my boss told me that I have until tomorrow to write a basic user manual.

"It's based on the old manual. Just switch out the illustrations," she said.

Yeah, sure.

First, the illustrations hadn't even been created, so the illustator had to work overtime to draw them. Hours later, I'm still working on the callouts for this completely different product. What are all these parts called anyway? Isn't it great that I get to name them? Also, back at home this evening, I discovered that I need still more illustrations. And I think that the illustrations and/or the steps in Start Guide for this product, which is frantically being written by another writer, are not correct. But, of course, it's hard to tell when I don't have the product here at home; it's on my office desk at work.

Second, this product is designed completely differently than the previous model, and it does more things. And that means more writing.

A 24-hour turnaround for this manual? Hardly. But I'm getting lots of overtime... No IHIPs yet, though.