Nice to meet you

my name is
Cristina
and I use this name when I teach writing and Italian language, I organize, I translate manuals or technical documents;
Bianca
when I write, edit and translate fiction. (Don’t worry, I answer anyway!)

Why do I use a pseudonym? They say we have 7 alter egos in the world… here, I have already met two. For a long time I received requests, emails and tags related to their activities and, so, I realized that another name was needed. Why a simple name like Bianca Heinz-Kurstermann? Well, Bianca is a name that I have always liked, on the surname I was inspired by the Austrian great-grandmother who, not even to do it on purpose, was a teacher.

If we really want to say it all, I found that people have less trouble pronouncing the German surname than the Italian one… One more reason to keep it, in addition to the fact that, by now, for many I am “White” regardless of the identity card.

Name aside, they are native Italian speakers and bilingual English, more out of passion than necessity, and I survive in some other language including the French (B2) and a bit of Norwegian (A2/B1) thanks to the patience of my teacher who encourages me to speak it despite not yet being comfortable with the Old Norse pronunciation; I understand well the Spanish army traveling virtually with videos of Vagaboom, but I still can’t speak it, because at the level of grammar and vocabulary I’m really at the beginning.

My professional career in the publishing world was not direct, although with hindsight, I should have caught some warning.

I was born as an editor of numbers and administrative processes. In fact, I spent about ten years working in modernly structured companies,
organizing
and
redeveloping
the administrative sectors. In addition, I managed and monitored economic flows on behalf of these companies as Financial Controller.

For many years, I have
managed and optimized
administrative departments and I have dealt with the economic management of
projects
on behalf of modernly structured international realities and I have
adapted
the techniques of
project management
to the organization of
fiction writing
, or creative writing.

Thanks to this
many years of experience
and critical issues acquired in content editing,
I help writers
to structure plot, setting and characters in a way and then to write a coherent book

and
realistic
, paying attention to
avoid
plot holes or infodumps; I provide suggestions and useful tools

to organize the work in view of a
deadline
, imprinting the writing in the perspective of a constant work over time, through a coaching
customized
.

In practice, for many I have been a bad dog, a mythological creature half Cerberus, half Charon: always there to talk about bureaucratic quibbles (hence my passion for Copyright of which I write on Altalex) and count the coins before ferrying them into the right accounts. There have been evenings of quadratures and complex days, but this reality has formed me and allowed me to refine the clinical eye, or should I say critical, able to find the flaws.

During these years I have always cultivated the culture of lifelong learning, I continued to study, follow courses and try my hand at writing, in foreign languages and, in the end, my path came to a crossroads: continue on this path, work with numbers and study narrative techniques in free time or…

I pulled up my sleeves and, after thirty years already for a while, I intensified the study and planning of this new road, facing the famous apprenticeship, learning from the courses and from those who knew more than me, I deepened the techniques of
Project Management
and process optimization, onediting, the creative writing, writing and copywriting in optics SEO.

I cultivated my passion for
writing
(you can consult my training course
here
),
organization
and
translation
, so much so that I actively began to combine these different activities and I turned the passion into a job, so much so that today:

• Revision of texts written by others (proofreading and editing) in Italian and English;
  • I am a proofreader, copy editor and content editor.
• I teach writers, aspiring proofreaders, editors and translators;
  • I take care of one-to-one online courses in
    Proofreading
    , Editing, work organization and copyright.
  • For those who do not yet know which path they want to follow or do not have time for a real course, I take care of the free thematic columns on writing, editing and marketing here on Parole in Linea.
• I translate essays (manuals and self-help) and Thriller and Fantasy novels;
  • I like translating novels because I use foreign languages, and I consider this activity a form of indirect creative writing. In addition, I believe it is important to get in touch with different cultures, even when you do not speak the same language. Reading distant writers, in time and places opens the mind; it is a journey without borders.
  • At the moment, I am actively involved in
    translating
    from English into Italian technical
    manuals
    on
    writing
    and ghostwriting under my own name and fantasy, supernatural and thriller
    novels
    , under a pseudonym (previews are available
    here
    ).
• I translate and proofread translations (PTE) with Polyglots for WordPress Italy;
• I write for third parties (Copywriting and Ghostwriting);
• I write articles on Copyright for Altalex;
• I help Writers in the design of their novels and in self-vision with the Writing Coach;
• I provide advice to move in the world of publishing and orient themselves according to the objectives set;
• I write stories (ok, I design more than I can physically write – mea culpa, mea culpa).

But, apart from the study, how did it come about?

In 2018, I opened a Blog, Parole in Linea, which later became the name of mine Company and I started talking about
practical writing
– which includes everything that precedes the actual drafting – because many people
surrender
at this stage and leave their own unexpressed
talent
. A real pity.