As a technical writer and editor, I have written about a fairly wide variety of topics, including oil rigs in Alberta, security documentation for a BC Supreme Court Prosecutions office, sleep habits of workers on commercial boats, cellular phone features, and even waste management. But the toughest one to date is the project I’m currently working on: bugs.

Not just bugs, dear readers, but fly-fishing lures, which in case you were not in the know, is not just limited to flies. This delightful topic for the dinner table includes leeches, scuds, dragonflies, worms, mayflies, chironomids, and all of their tasty forms throughout the life cycle. I’ve been living on caffeine and mineral water for days now, unable to consume anything with small, questionable particles like herbs or rice. I can’t even look at seafood. My husband wakes me up two or three times a night, shaking me to stop me from mumbling, “Don’t use a barbed hook!”

Emotional detachment is not one of my strong suits. I’ve always had trouble with one key function in the technical writing business: the ability to abstract onesself from the topic at hand. To write about any technical topic well, you must first be objective to it. I’m pretty good at that in the beginning of a project, but all too often I find myself emotionally involved with computer security issues, or the ingredients in canned goods. Most technical writers try to learn all there is to know about a topic in a very short time frame, and then forget it a week later. The mental hard drive is only so large, after all, so we learn to deiberately and selectively forget. I just don’t think I’m going to be able to let this bug thing go.

A dear friend of mine spent the summer of 2006 discovering the joys of gardening, albeit not in a garden. Her new 10×20 sundeck is filled with planters of all descriptions, and a wide variety of herbs and perennials. The amazing thing is that Liz hates bugs even more than I do – and I suppose if she can learn to get over her creepiness about it, I should too. She even started composting in a bin with REAL worms!! I have an outdoor composter in my garden, but I never turn it over – the thought of what might be in there terrifies me.

So what can I do to get the “bugs out of my system”? I could turn to the eternal tool of all writers, gin, and let that work it’s magic for me. But fankly, it’s expensive, and my recently limited diet has probably bumped my alcoholic tendencies into overdrive. One thimbleful could put me over the edge. And when I think about it, most alcoholic writers die young.

Instead, I think I’ll go for a run tomorrow morning, with my new walkman blasting trashy 80′s metal, let the dog off the leash, think about the fresh air and sunshine, and when I’ve had enough of going outdoors where the bugs live, come back and think about leeches again for a while.