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Technical Writing

Technical writing for government and software teams.

RFPs, statements of work, and developer docs. I edited a 653-page Medicaid RFP through issuance and wrote SOWs for Maryland's MD THINK platform.

The trick

Jargon goes in the hat. Plain English comes out.

Same rules, same meaning. Now a reader can act on it.

Before · the jargon

Per Section 4.2(b), the Offeror shall ensure that all deliverables are commensurate with the stipulated requirements, leveraging a synergistic, end-to-end methodology to facilitate the timely onboarding of stakeholders in accordance with the governing framework.

After · plain English

Section 4.2(b): what the contractor must do

The contractor must deliver every item on the list. Each item must meet the stated requirements. Train stakeholders on time.

  • Offerorcontractor
  • shall ensuremust deliver
  • commensurate with the stipulated requirementsmeet the stated requirements
  • leveraging a synergistic, end-to-end methodology(cut: it added no meaning)

Projects

Maryland Department of Health — Technical Writing

Government Technical Documentation · 2023

Embedded with the Maryland Department of Health (via Innosoft) as a technical writer on Medicaid-side programs — and the programs were not small. The Non-Emergency Medical Transportation (NEMT) re-procurement put Maryland's statewide Medicaid transportation service — roughly $50M a year, nearly a million trips annually — out to bid as a single award running up to seven years: a contract vehicle in the $350M class over its full term. James developmentally edited the 653-page RFP through issuance on eMMA, resolving open questions across program, legal, and engineering reviewers. On MD THINK — Maryland's $200M+ shared cloud platform for human services — he wrote the Statements of Work that put three case-management modules under signed agreement: Children's Medical Services, Breast & Cervical Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment, and the Kidney Disease Program, each turning engineering drafts into structured, signable agreements with defined deliverables, service-level commitments, and Section 508-aware documentation standards. Also on the desk: a draft RFP for the Medicaid EDI third-party systems contract and program planning documents for the NEMT transition. The deliverables themselves are government work product and stay archived with the client — that is how this work is done — but the public record below shows the programs, and full writing samples are available on request.

Role: Technical Writer, Documentation Lead|Tools: RFP Development, Statements of Work, Developmental Editing, Section 508, eMMA, Public Trust

→ Procurement documents that shipped — issued on eMMA, signed by the agency. Samples available on request.

Proposal Writing & Account Management

Proposal Writing · Account Management

Wrote and managed proposals and accounts — translating client requirements into scoped, persuasive deliverables and keeping multi-stakeholder relationships moving. The discipline behind every successful bid: clarity, structure, and follow-through.

Role: Proposal Writer, Account Manager|Tools: Proposal Development, Requirements Capture, Client Management

Motley Fool Articles

Financial / Editorial Writing · 2014

Contributed articles for The Motley Fool, translating financial and business topics into clear, engaging writing for a broad investing audience. Early proof of the core technical-writing skill: making complex things understandable.

Role: Author, Researcher|Tools: Editorial Writing, Financial Research, Audience-aware Voice

Startup-Ecosystem Research — SXSW / AARP

Contract Research · Innovation Scouting

A SXSW internship turned into paid contract research for AARP's innovation programs: systematically mapping the startup ecosystems of twelve U.S. metros — Boston/Cambridge (priority, and the deepest pass), New York, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Houston, New Orleans, Miami, Kansas City, St. Louis, Raleigh, Madison, and Omaha. Each metro was catalogued across a twelve-category taxonomy — incubators, accelerators, university entrepreneurship departments (MIT and Harvard included), startup events, trade associations and tech councils, user groups, meetups and news outlets, service providers, local influencers and competitions, VC and angel groups, government organizations, and chambers — with per-organization records: name, site, phone, email, contact, title, city. Delivered as working spreadsheets plus formatted Word reports, through multiple client revision rounds.

Role: Contract Researcher, Data Wrangler, Report Writer|Tools: Desk Research, Contact Sourcing, Spreadsheet Systems, Formatted Reporting

→ The kind of unglamorous, exhaustive research that innovation programs actually run on. Today this is exactly the work you'd hand to AI — and James would know: he became the person clients hire to do precisely that.

On video

Techdocwrite — the gamified academy

An earlier venture: a full technical-writing course played as a role-playing campaign in the world of Plundaria. Students cleared the API Documentation Kingdom, survived the Tutorial Maze, and fought the FAQ Phoenix — because every boss was really their own doubt.

Got a document that needs to be readable?

Tell me the audience and the deadline. I'll reply with a plan and a rate.