Hey my people! Today's post is going to be about hiring a tech editor. I hired a tech editor for one of my patterns and now I plan to hire one for every pattern. It was such a valuable experience in which I learned a ton.
I used Sweet Bird Crochet for my tech editing. She has edited for many well known crochet designers and is wonderful to work with. She really helped me through the process without making me feel like to much of an idiot. She will remain my first choice!
You may be asking what is tech editing? Well it is when someone who has a vast knowledge of crochet techniques and math to be able to read a pattern and check it for errors. The errors they check for are syntax, grammar, and math. A tech editor has to know pretty much every facet of crochet in order to be able to read through the pattern and identify the errors. A tech editor does not work up the piece, they only read the text and look at the pictures and or graphs to make sure it reads clearly and well.
I submitted my first pattern in what I thought was a pretty good state. It turned out that I needed to change of lot of things. Mostly I had to change how I wrote out my repeats and how I wrote out the special stitch instructions. It was really good to have someone that was objective looking at things to make sure they made sense. I wrote the pattern and worked up the piece, of course, I knew what I meant. I hope that when I finally release the pattern others find that it reads well and is easy to follow. I do have YouTube tutorials for the stitches that I use so that someone can watch and have visual direction. I also plan to make a full tutorial of the pattern.
Designing takes so much time! Who knew?! This new journey of becoming a crochet designer has really been different than I imagined. It has been good and I have learned so much along the way. I hope what I have learned translates into my patterns.
Stay tuned for when I post my pattern for free here on my blog.
Happy hooking!