Post signed by Tânia Lins
As a child, I imagined books as portals that transported me to other places and times, narratives that told me stories of lives so different from mine, but I didn’t have a deeper awareness of this; it was just something incipient, which would only take shape years later.
In this “immersion”, I had the habit of writing down words whose meaning I did not know, dates and historical events, to look up later in dictionaries and encyclopedias, since there was no internet at the time. Little did I know that, in the future, this habit would be a condition sine qua non for my work as an editor or, in more didactic language, text improver.
2010 Residencial Magazine – March @ Tácito Carvalho e Silva
The editor is the one who gathers technical knowledge and diversified cultural background to “fine-tune” books; he is curious, inquisitive, a Sherlock Holmes (impossible not to resort to literature to express myself). Versatile, it pays attention to the particularities and concepts addressed in the work, thus avoiding mistaken or misrepresented ideas.
This figure, often misunderstood, also points out inconsistencies in the text, identifies redundancies (well beyond going up and down) and rescues “lost” characters (“Where is the wife who existed until the previous chapter?”).
2010 Residencial Magazine – March @ Tácito Carvalho e Silva
Essentially, the editor puts himself in the reader’s shoes by following the narrative with a critical eye, asking leading questions, much like an analyst, who provoke deeper reflection during an analysis session.
As an editor, I work with spiritualist literature, which includes the production of psychographed spiritist books — a process in which the medium writes with the help of a disembodied spirit.
2010 Residencial Magazine – March @ Tácito Carvalho e Silva
Many people believe that these works, due to the way they were conceived, are already ready and do not need retouching. It’s a mistake, because literary creation goes far beyond putting a narrative on paper; it requires effort, research, a combination of multiple knowledge. Therefore, psychographed works are also co-produced by people of flesh and blood.
2010 Residencial Magazine – March @ Tácito Carvalho e Silva
Authors — incarnate or disembodied — rely on good partners from different areas (an inclusive market is what we need in the world!) to bring their stories to life. Thus, the editor acts as a facilitator, showing possible paths and worrying about quality, something that goes far beyond grammatical and spelling corrections. The process of editing a book requires discipline and intellectual effort until the writer enters the period.
2010 Residencial Magazine – March @ Tácito Carvalho e Silva
In the final stage, with the book already printed, having it in your hands brings a sense of accomplishment. Cover, grammage, paper smell, sewing of the notebooks form the body of the book; stories are the soul.
Books have the power to transpose dimensions, whether physical or extracorporeal. They inspire, excite and break down borders, far beyond, here and there.
* Tânia Lins has a degree in Business Administration and a postgraduate degree in Portuguese; Business and Institutional Communication; and Digital Journalism. She has been working in the publishing field for fourteen years, with professional and academic experience focused on editing, preparing and revising works, managing editorial production, critical reading and literary coaching. Currently, she is editorial coordinator at Editora Vida & Consciência.
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