Nina Benneton and I discovered we share more than our love for Jane Austen ... Read through our lovely chat and try to discover what it is. Moreover, leave your comment to get a chance to win Nina's new amazing book: Compulsively Mr Darcy. You'll find the details below.
Q. Hello, Nina and welcome on My Jane Austen Book Club . Would you mind telling us about your book?
A: Compulsively
Mr. Darcy is a modern, romantic comedy update of Jane
Austen's Pride and Prejudice. In this re-telling, Mr. Darcy is a control freak
with obsessive-compulsive disorder who, during a trip to Vietnam to help the
Bingley family adopt a trendy third-world orphan, meets an impulsive, carefree,
infectious disease doctor Elizabeth Bennet.
Q: In
one recent blog post, you wrote you
started writing to conquer your fear of writing? Fear of writing? Why?
A:
Because, besides that it's easier for me to do a complicated calculus problem
in my head than write a sentence, in any language, I'm not a native English
speaker. I struggled with English and writing through high school and
college—in America— and it's the one subject for which I'd received very
mediocre grades in school.
Q: Yet, your book received a Best Book
rating from Long and Short Reviews, and the reviewer wrote, 'Some of Ms.
Benneton's turns of phrase were brilliant and utterly entertaining.' When you read that, how did that make you
feel?
A: Astounded. Tickled to death. Proud. That
was the moment I felt I've finally conquered my fear of writing in English.
As a child, I'd been taught some rudiments
of British English by French nuns, but not enough to be fluent. When I was a
teenager, my family moved to America. American English confused me.
For example, in British English, it’s: 'The
faculty are meeting in the teacher's lounge.'
In American English, it's: 'The faculty is
meeting in the teacher's lounge.'
With American English, in this context,
'faculty' is a used as collective singular noun; 'faculty' is considered as
'one collective body.' But, it's more logical and natural to me to think of
'faculty' as plural, because there are more than one person.
There are other rules that have continued to
confuse me, no matter how long I lived here in America.
You arrive at an airport, you don't arrive 'to' the airport—which would
make more sense to me.
You wear pants, not pant. That extra 's' has always seems so
inefficient to me. How many one-legged person there are wearing trousers?
'You have a butt, not butts, Nina,' my
writing teacher recently pointed out. But, I argued cheekily, when I look
behind me, I see two.
I don't know why, but my mind was not able
to grasp the intricate and illogical rules of English grammar, British or
American, until I took up writing to tackle my fear of writing a few years ago.
Q: Curiously, for your debut novel, you
decided to tackle a retelling of one of the most beloved, classic English
novels, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Any trepidation with regard
to the subject matter or writing fiction in a language not your mother's
tongue?
A: Quite cheeky of me, was it not, to tackle
a Jane Austen's novel?
Trepidation? Gosh, gobs and gobs of it, but
not with the subject matter. I've loved Jane Austen's novels for years. I knew
her characters as well as I knew my siblings and I felt, as a storyteller, I
could tackle the subject. I wasn't so confident about the technical aspects of
writing the story, however.
Fortunately, early in my writing journey, I
found incredible, talented women on the Jane Austen fan fiction forum who loved
Jane Austen as much as I did, and when I approached them for help with
copyediting for grammar mistakes, they generously agreed.
One person in particular, Sharon, took the
trouble to not only correct my grammar, she began to teach me—using my own
words in my writing—why this rule was this and why this rule was that. Her
physicist mother was from Cuba, so Sharon had grown up with a non-native
English speaking mother. Sharon intuitively understood my difficulty. She could
explain exactly why and where I—a non-native English speaker like her
mother—was confused with regard to certain rules and conventions.
Best of all, Sharon corrected my mistakes,
yet she didn't rewrite or change my 'writer's voice'—my writing still sounded
like my writing instead of hers.
After Sharon, I’d gained enough confidence
to hit the grammar books and enrolled in editing classes. Now, the rules begin
to make sense because I could apply them to my own writing.
Q: In
the acknowledgement of your book, you thanked your agent for 'believing in your
writing voice. Above, you mentioned 'writer's voice' again. Every writer explains voice differently.
Could you explain what you mean by 'voice'?
A: A
writer's voice is an author's unique style—a quality that conveys an author's
attitude, character, personality. The word-choice a writer chooses, the way the
writer arranges and composes those chosen words in a sentence, the cadence of the
words when a reader read the sentence aloud—all that is 'voice.'
Some writers struggle and write for years
without attaining that recognizable, distinctive voice, because, as I
mentioned, it's also 'attitude, character and personality' that go into the
'voice.' Yet, some writer's voice is very distinct—when you read a sentence
they've written, you immediately recognize their 'voice' even if there's no
signature.
Readers either like a writer's voice or they
don't. It's very subjective.
Yet, this should not be an excuse for
writers, native or non-native English writers, to not work hard to give clarity
to their writing. The more I learned the rules and edit my work, the more my
voice came out.
Q:
Tell us one surprising thing you learned in your writing classes that
you could share with other non-native English writers?
A:
What's considered 'good writing' in another language is not necessarily
'good writing' in English. That surprised me.
For example, in Spanish, a beautiful, melodious
language, good writing means long sentences to express a general idea. Good
writing in Arabic is ornately decorative with adjectives and loaded with
proverbs. Good writing in Chinese can be full of flamboyant cliches. I hope
readers well versed in those languages will forgive me for being simplistic
here.
In comparison, good English writing is
plain. Concise. Boring to non-native writers.
Non-native writers like myself tend to be
too wordy when writing in English. Always, less is more, Nina. That's probably
the most surprising and important thing that I've learned from my writing
teachers.
In first draft, write as wordy as you want
to freely express yourself, but in editing, you want to cut and cut and cut
until you can have imparted the same message in as fewest number of words. It's the editing that allows a writer's voice
to come out more vividly in English.
There are some writers who manage to
successfully carry the style of their native language over to English. Isabelle Allende or Rudolph Anaya—two of my
favorite non-native English writers—for example, can write in long sentences
overflowing with decorative adjectives and proverbs and still be appreciated by
the native American ear. But I think this is uncommon and requires an unusual amount
of talent.
Q: How did you come to know so much about
different languages? Are you
multi-lingual?
A: No. I do not consider myself
multi-lingual, for I'm unable to retain any language I've learned in my
too-small brain. At one point, I was fluent in French as a child, but when I
was last in Paris, I found myself speaking very bad Spanish to our French
friends.
As to where I came upon my knowledge from
languages, from my father. He's multi-lingual. He knows how to read, write and
speak in at least probably seven or eight languages. When I was young, he used
to freelance as a translator for children's books and even a few romance
novels. I used to sneak into his office and tried to read the books in foreign
languages. I just loved the sounds of foreign languages. Unfortunately, I
didn't inherit my father's facility with languages, just the fascination.
In Compulsively
Mr. Darcy, I indulged myself by including a scene where Elizabeth and Darcy
discussed the linguisitic difference.
A small
Vietnamese man smiled at him. He pointed to the cyclo
behind him and said something
Darcy couldn’t understand.
“No, No. I’m waiting for my friend.”
The man began to talk in a conversational manner.
Darcy couldn’t
decipher a word the man spoke. He wondered
how to walk away politely.
Spotting Elizabeth at a distance, he breathed a sigh of relief.
“Sorry to
keep you
waiting.” Elizabeth reached them,
smiled at
Darcy, and turned toward the cyclo driver. “Hello. I’m
Lizzy. Are
you busy today with many rides?” The driver responded and
Elizabeth answered, “We go to Marble Mountain. Too far for cyclo.”
The cyclo driver spoke again and pointed at the ocean.
“Enjoy the beach. It’s beautiful.” Elizabeth said good-bye.
Once they were settled
in the backseat of a taxi and had given the driver their destination, Darcy asked, “How did you under- stand what he said?”
“What do you mean? He was speaking in English.”
Distracted by the view behind her of a passing bicycle
carrying tied-up pigs, he didn’t
reply for a moment before
he confessed, with some embarrassment, “I had a hard
time.”
“I’m used to my aunt Mai’s relatives back home. I learned to keep
it simple. They don’t have verb tenses or plurals.
You don’t say ‘He walks’ but ‘he walk.’
You don’t say ‘I went to the market
yesterday’ but ‘I go market
yesterday.’ ‘Two apples’
becomes ‘two apple’—details like that.”
Q: After Pride and
Prejudice, tell us what Jane Austen novels is your second favorite and why?
Mansfield Park,
perhaps because I identified with Fanny Price— uprooted from her home in
Portsmouth and transplanted in the 'foreign' soil of Mansfield Park. At the
end, she came to the startling realization that Mansfield Park is home, not
Portsmouth. That's exactly how I feel
about America.
Q: What's next for
Nina Benneton the writer?
Juggling multiple
projects. I'm editing a Pride and Prejudice Regency Romantic Suspense I'd
challenged myself to write last year. I'm about to tackle revision of another
contemporary romantic comedy next month. I'm writing first draft a romantic
time-travel story. I also write short
stories for a change of pace and to have fun. And, of course, I'm taking
writing classes.
The Author: As a
child, Nina Benneton promised the French nuns who taught that she would grow up
and find the cure for cancer, effect world peace, and win a Nobel Prize for
something, anything. Alas, her own Mr.
Darcy and the requisite number of beautiful children interrupted her plans.
Tired of alphabetizing her spices and searching for stray Barbie shoes, she
turned to writing.
The Book
Compulsively Mr. Darcy, earned a Best Book review and the
Reader's Poll Book of the Month February 2012 from Long
and Short Review, 'Hands down…a must read for lovers and fans of classic
romance.' Fresh Fiction Review called it a 'tenderly written
novel.' Savvy Verse and Wit described it as ' 'More than a love story, Compulsively Mr. Darcy
is about loving someone faults and all, accepting and not changing who they
are, and growing together in love. Steamy, sexy, and fun, it will
have readers giggling and blushing at the same time.' Publishers
Weekly wrote, 'Die-hard fans of everything Austen will enjoy this
update of her classic tale.'
GIVEAWAY DETAILS
Sourcebooks will offer
1 Paperback copy to US readers
1 e-book copy to readers from the rest of the world
Please specify which country in the world you live in in your comment and don't forget to add your e-mail address. This giveaway ends on March 1.
