Get the clients, keep the clients, grow your expertise. Weekly tips and helps from an experienced editor community.
Many of us are hustling to help clients wrap up patterns that are launching early in 2025, I know I am! There are less than 30 days left in this year, which can make you either want to hibernate, want to panic, want to reflect, or some combination of all of the above. I propose we all throw some gratitude outward. Technical editing is a service. You serve others, day in, day out, pattern by pattern, design by design. And in exchange, your clients pay you. But what else have these...
Time for another tech editor interview! Recently I interviewed Cherie Mellick of https://sweetbirdcrochet.com/. Cherie is a designer and editor that cares deeply about helping to create great crochet patterns that amplify the designer's voice and confidence. She empowers designers by educating them through the design process, not just telling them what is wrong in their patterns, but guiding them like a mama bird would her chick. Click below to watch the interview on YouTube or scroll down to...
I had a day last week where I spent most of it not editing. I created agreements, onboarded clients, answered emails, messed around with some of the tech I was trying to implement. None of it was paid work, just the admin side of my business. Has this happened to you? Some of us start editing without a clear plan. We start editing like we may start a sweater project, we wing it without actually reading the pattern or swatching. We take on whatever editing work comes our way and tell a few...
Just over 9 years ago I hit "buy" on a course called Learn to Tech Edit from a website called Joeli's Kitchen. I always tell new students that I never expected it to change my life like has, and I do sincerely hope it does the same for them. Nine years is a long time. It's about 17% of my life so far (all y'all can now figure out how old I am), and I feel a time well spent. I love what my brain can do when it hits the spreadsheets and the PDFs. In the last 9 years, things have changed....
Thanks to everyone who responded to my last newsletter! You all are so thoughtful and inspiring. I read and reply to every email I get, so hit reply anytime. -- Do you charge flat rates or by the hour? If you are charging by the hour, your client is paying you for the time to do the things you agreed on, usually editing and other editing-related tasks. But there are situations we run into during our workflow that we might stop our timers. Here's some things I stop for: Confusion Well, I don't...
Exactly zero percent of us start out as expert editors as soon as we start taking on clients. Like anything in life, it takes an enormous amount of practice, effort, and energy to learn the skills of editing while building a business, and maybe some substantial time before we start to feel at ease in our skills. I've been observing my fellow editors and there seems to be a pattern of growth that we all go through, and I postulate that confidence is directly related to how many patterns people...
Hey there editors, I have been working through updating my own personal editing checklist and was musing on how I got this list in the first place. Somewhat painfully, it was by missing something, and then adding that thing to the list so I wouldn't miss it again. Some of them kind of surprised me when they happened. There were definitely d'oh-face palm moments, but some others were sneaky. Here's 5 things I have checked in my work over the last year that continue to show up regularly in...