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Category Archives: Christine

Name that book

26 Sunday Jul 2020

Posted by ninevoices in Christine, Observations, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

There’s been a bit of a Twitter craze recently to come up with really boring descriptions of famous books. The ninevoices decided to have a go. How many can you guess? Do you have some gems to challenge us with?

(Well, come on, what else is there to do besides shop for a Darth Vader facemask?)

If you want it, it’s here: https://gopostore.com/product/darth-varder-face-mask-stqt1404018fma/

Name that book:

  1. Lawyer advocates protecting avian – and anyone resembling it.
  2. Old butler questions career choice but sticks with it.
  3. Man resents government, then changes mind. 
  4. Two friends take long walk to dispose of item of jewellery.
  5. 9-35 to Victoria delayed by adverse weather conditions and a police incident.
  6. After lifetime of misery woman marries disabled employer.
  7. Grain merchant reunited with wrong daughter
  8. Dyslexic child hangs siblings and self
  9. Young woman, poor judge of men, inherits farm.
  10. Island guests eliminated one by one.
  11. Fate of sisters in the hands of crotchety aunt.
  12. Draught under door leads, eventually, to capital punishment.
  13. House of seamtress’s employer collapses.
  14. Wild scenery, tame love story
  15. Professional mourner, accused of theft, gets more than he asked for.
  16. Professor with novelty timepiece solves riddles leading to the Louvre.
  17. Man makes long journey, has IT problems. 
  18. Sisters move to Devon, marry dull men.
  19. Woman who once swiped left and regretted it, gets second bite.

Covid-19 and the case of the stymied writers

08 Monday Jun 2020

Posted by ninevoices in Articles, Christine, Observations, Uncategorized, Writerly emotions

≈ 2 Comments

Covid-19 seems to have affected a lot more things than I anticipated.

For one thing, I’m still trying to get used to the fact that nobody else is going to be in my flat anytime soon.  I don’t have to sniff all the liquid soaps in the supermarket to make sure they’re not too girly for male guests.  I don’t have to invest in posh paper napkins.  There’s no point trying out recipes to see if they might impress the family. 

I can spray on perfumes without fretting about whether they’ll offend.  (Perfume is my passion but not necessarily everyone else’s.)

And writing has become impossible.

See, I have a character in a boat on a loch and things are about to happen to her.  I know where she is, and why.  I just can’t decide WHEN she is.

 

The pandemic has changed the world.  Do you set your ‘contemporary’ story just far enough in the past to not acknowledge Covid-19 ?  And if you do, should it include ominous foreshadowings?  Or if you decide to exclude current events, will your story be relevant to readers? 

We can’t aim for a future, post-Covid-19 world, because we don’t know that there will ever be a post-Covid-19 world, or what the future looks like. 

The Guardian recently published an article about writers’ lockdown blues:

“I’m finding it incredibly difficult to work out what to do,” says Holly Watt, author of To the Lions, winner of the 2019 CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger. She is working on her next novel, the third in her series following investigative journalist Casey Benedict, which was due to be published in summer 2021.

“I’m trying to work out where we might be. Might there be a vaccine? Will getting on a plane feel wildly anachronistic? Will journalists working from an office seem weird? How interesting can a book actually be when everyone is sitting in their sitting room in their pyjamas?” Watt asks. “It feels odd to be writing about people hopping on trains or popping to the pub, but focusing on Covid might make it date hideously. But if you don’t mention it, it is the massive elephant in the room.”

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jun/01/no-pubs-no-kissing-no-flying-how-covid-19-is-forcing-authors-to-change-their-novels

How are you dealing with this?

Homework # 1: Write about a villain you love to hate, or hate to love

24 Friday Apr 2020

Posted by ninevoices in Christine, Ed, Homework, Maggie

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Andrew Scott, Killing Eve, Moriarty, Pride & Prejudice, Rebecca, Sherlock Holmes

  1. Maggie

A Villain from the Pages of Literature : Elizabeth Bennet’s Father

Surely not, you protest? For Mr Bennet of Longbourn is initially an extremely appealing figure. Cultured and educated, we see immediately that he is shackled to a wife seemingly designed to make any man of refinement squirm. While feeling deeply sorry for him, we are amused by his quick wit. By his dry, acerbic humour. And by his frequent retreats from family life into the eighteenth-century man-shed of his study, with its much-loved books and a decanter of the finest Madeira.

We laugh at his waggish humour and at his impatience with what he sees as trivial female concerns:

‘No more lace, Mrs Bennett, I implore you.’

‘If he had any compassion for me, (Mr Bingley) would not have danced half so much! For God’s sake, say no more of his partners. Oh! that he had sprained his ankle in the first dance!’

At the same time, we admire his acute social perception and good humour.

‘For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours and laugh at them, in return.’

Yet this is also a man who is publicly dismissive of his wife, frequently in front of their children and, as we come to know him better, his sarcasm – coldness even – begins to grate. What twenty-first-century wife would not chuck a heavy china ornament at a partner who delivers such careless rejoinders to legitimate concerns about the future of their girls, and what will happen when she and they are eventually evicted from their home?

‘You want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it.’

‘Let us flatter ourselves. I may be the survivor.’

Eventually, however, considering Wickham’s treatment of the Bennet daughter, Lydia, – seducing a sixteen-year-old and only making an honest woman of her after being handsomely paid off by Darcy – we see how badly his moral compass is skewed:

‘Wickham’s a fool, if he takes her with a farthing less than ten thousand pounds. I should be sorry to think so ill of him, in the very beginning of our relationship.’

Pride and Prejudice, as Jane Austen signals from the beginning, points a beady eye at marriage and how essential mutual respect is to marital happiness. Through dissecting the Bennet’s own shaky partnership – based, we learn, on little more than youthful passion and imprudence – Austen highlights, as evocatively as only she can, the realities of marrying in haste and repenting at leisure.

Disappointment has made Mr Bennet cruel and results in making this reader sigh for the man he might have been, had he either chosen a more compatible wife or made an effort to be more understanding of the fallible woman to whom he has tied himself.

Even Elizabeth, the closest of his daughters to her father, has ‘never been blind to the impropriety of her father’s behaviour as a husband.’ He loves her (being at least prepared to stop a marriage to the ridiculous Collins), and she him, but the soundest lesson he is able to pass on to her is that love alone is rarely enough. And that being a bad father can have dire consequences.

Oh, to be able to create such complex characters as Mr Bennet!

 

—-0000—-

 

2. Ed

The villain speaks

At least that simpering whining little thing has gone to London.   She’s out of my sight, thank goodness – I can’t bear to see her creeping round this house, this lovely mansion that isn’t hers and never will be.  I do get some pleasure in tormenting her and frightening her but that doesn’t make up for the ache I get when I think of the real mistress.

But the master has gone to London with her.  Why does he stick with her?  And why marry her in the first place?  His wife had been dead for only a year.  How could he fall for her in Monte Carlo?  I suppose he was lonely.  Maybe she just happened to be there and simple male desire made him go for her – men are so stupid that way.  But I can’t think that she would satisfy him in that respect – you can’t imagine her doing anything but just lying there and waiting for it to be over.  Now the real mistress, she’d be lively, adventurous, exciting in bed!   I bet she taught the master a thing or two, for all his debonair man-of-the-world appearance.

Was it because this one is so different?  She’s got no spirit: she doesn’t stand up to me, and she lets that overseer Crawley take advantage of her.  Timid, she is – one example: she hasn’t even asked me what happens to all the food that’s not eaten at breakfast – I know she’s curious about that, but she just hasn’t got the nerve to ask!  How feeble.  And when I showed her her writing desk, where she’d be writing her letters – well, the look of dismay on her face!  The real mistress, she had friends in high society, in London, in foreign places, everywhere.  But this one doesn’t know anyone.   No-one to write to.

The master has to see that he’s made a dreadful mistake in trying to bring this one here.  She’ll never take the place of the old mistress in this house.  I’m seeing to that.  I thought I’d managed to drive him away from her at the ball, tricking her into trusting me and wearing the real mistress’s gown: the look on his face, that was magnificent!    The shame, the horror on hers!  I really thought I’d broken them then.

But it didn’t work.  He still seems to want her. She should’ve got rid of me after that.  But she’s not brave enough.  So I’m still here. I’ll have to do something else, something that will drive her out even if it doesn’t make him kick her out.  This may take a little time, I must plan something even better than the ball gown trick.  I know she’s afraid of me, but I’ll become her friend again, then she might be so pleased, I could do anything.  I’ll do nothing for a few weeks, lull her into a false sense of security.  Yes, that’s it.  Be all smiles when they get back, and for a couple of months …

Can I smell burning  … ?

 

—0000—-

 

3. Christine

The trouble with fictional villains is that they don’t always translate to the screen.

Moriarty is a straight bad egg in the books, a moustache-twirling crazy-clever enemy of Sherlock Holmes.  Conan Doyle designed him expressly to meet the need to challenge the ridiculous intellect of Holmes.  We respect and fear Moriarty, but don’t have much in the way of mixed emotions about him….in the books.  Put him on screen, and cast Andrew Scott, and we are confronted with a boyish, gentle psychopath, one with a soft Irish accent and melting eyes…and we kind of want to mother him as well as run away from him.  We see his genius, we admire his suits…we slightly fancy him.  I thought Scott was awful casting when he first appeared, but gradually I grew to adore him.  He wasn’t the villain.  He was the star attraction.  He was hardly a villain at all.

I haven’t read the Villanelle novels that arrived on screen as ‘Killing Eve’.  Perhaps Villanelle is written just as Jodie Comer plays her, but I can’t imagine anyone could get down on paper what Comer does on screen.  She’s the coldest sociopath, who kills on a whim for mischief, in hideous (but often blackly hilarious) ways.  Yet she’s also wonderful, a riot of convincing accents and disguises, who find endless pleasures in life, who is by turns childlike and hostile with her handler Konstantin.  We understand why Eve is so fascinated with her.  We don’t want to be fascinated ourselves, but somehow, appallingly, we are.

But the most unsuccessful translation of a villain from book to screen, for me, remains Daniel Cleaver in Bridget Jones’ Diary.  In the book he’s an out-and-out sh*t.  We feel his villainy ooze from every paragraph.  Dump him, Bridget! we silently implore. Run to Mr Darcy!  But on screen, they had Renee Zellweger forced to choose between Colin Firth and Hugh Grant.  Both utterly butterly, I’m sure we agree.  But Daniel’s charm was supercharged by Grant.  Watching him, I felt I could almost overlook his dishonesty, ruthlessness and lechery.  The producers didn’t think this through. After all,  there’s not much chance any of us will ever need a suitor to spring us from a Thai prison.  But a man who can make us laugh and fancy us because of our Big Pants? A man who makes us feel sexy at all times?

You begin to understand the attraction of Wickham.

What’s behind you?

13 Monday Apr 2020

Posted by ninevoices in Christine, Observations, Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

The lockdown reveals us to ourselves in unexpected ways.

The ninevoices are used to getting together every fortnight. We thought: lockdown isn’t going to stop us.  So we first tried Skype (four voices, five faces, and most of the conversation consisting of “How do I turn the picture on?”).  Then we tried Zoom (eight faces, nine voices, thanks to some stalwart mobile-phone patching by Anita).  We’ll try Zoom again, if only because nine faces lends itself beautifully to a 3 x 3 grid, and no-one suddenly decamps to a corner and goes mute.

© Smartmeetings.com

Like everyone in the world who’s trying to keep in touch through Skype and Zoom and Facetime and Whatsapp video and Google Hangouts and lots of other clever apps, we’re discovering that it’s not just our voices and faces we’re presenting to the world.  It’s what’s in the background – our homes.  Admit it – you look at all those video phone-ins from journalists and presenters, and what you’re really thinking is: “I like your lamps” or “Gosh, you’re very traditional” or “Do you really have bookcases in your basement?”.

So I think we’ve all learned to pick our spots.  We position the laptop in the corner of a tidy room, or in front of the serious books, or angled towards the good curtains, or certainly away from the carnage of unwashed dishes in the kitchen.  We position the webcam at eye level or above, we face a window. We brush our hair carefully to disguise how we’re turning into Boris Johnson.  We’re learning to edit our lives to show ourselves to the world to best advantage.

Late night host Seth Meyers in his Covidic attic studio. Well jel.

Which makes me think: as writers, do we do the same?  In our writing, do we show our unmade beds and the curtain sagging from the runners? Do we reveal that we don’t mind dirty plates hanging round on a table for a week or two?  Or do we arrange the books on the shelf so that the Philip Roths hide the George RR Martins?  Is our writing a place where we present ourselves as a slightly different person?

© Yale climate connections

I do know that when a friend emailed that she planned to Facetime me in ten minutes, I hastily took off a jumper decorated with food stains, and rushed out to the garden to take the call, having first worked out which bit of foliage would look prettiest behind me.  After the call I went straight back indoors.  It was the worst kind of self-instagramming, but was somehow necessary to disguise the fact that the only way I could have had tidiness in shot behind me was to Facetime her while sitting on the loo.

How do YOU roll?  What’s behind you in the Zoom frame?  What does your writing carefully edit out?

Christine, who currently looks like

Our Sarah wins Colm Tóibín award

06 Saturday Jul 2019

Posted by ninevoices in Christine, Colm Tóibín, Maggie, Sarah Dawson, Winning Competitions

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Colm Toibin International Short Story Competition 2019

One of our nine voices is frustratingly modest, but the other eight are BURSTING WITH PRIDE.

Our much-loved and madly talented Sarah has just won…..the Colm Tóibín International Short Story Award!

She won with her warm-hearted and poignant story, ‘Dinosaurs Rule’.  The Wexford Literary Festival judges clearly saw what we see – the lucidity, insightfulness and generosity of her writing.

Oh, we are so proud and so happy for her!  It will be extra crisps and chocolate cake at our next get-together…

Here she is: Sarah Dawson

How’s THIS for a competition prize?

22 Tuesday Jan 2019

Posted by ninevoices in Christine, Competitions to Enter

≈ 1 Comment

 

A Canadian woman has launched a writing contest for her luxury home

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-46913322

 

I’m really quite tempted.  I like Canada.

Punctuation certainly used to matter…

27 Friday Jul 2018

Posted by ninevoices in Christine, Grammar

≈ Leave a comment

Noticed this today as I drove past.  The Old Post Office is, of course, no longer a Post Office, but lots of luxury flats.  What are chances that its modern equivalent would take such care to put the proper apostrophe in “Postmen’s”?

Of course, nowadays it would have to be “Postal Workers’ Entrance”.  Or more probably: “Staff Only”.

Writer rushes into burning building to save two finished novels

17 Saturday Sep 2016

Posted by ninevoices in Christine, Heard lately, News, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

burningauthor

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/37395526/writer-rushes-into-burning-building-to-save-two-finished-novels

I think we all know how he felt.

Note to self: email finished novels to own address.  Twice.

Designing our book cover

22 Monday Aug 2016

Posted by ninevoices in Christine, Marketing, Seen lately

≈ 1 Comment

I was interested to be sent this link, presumably for self-publishing in a digital medium: https://blog.dreamstime.com/2016/08/19/book-cover-design-how-to-choose-and-use-images_art44964

I quite like the idea of subverting a genre by having space ships alongside a regency heroine.  I guess I’ll never get employed as art director for a publishing house…

We can manage this…

12 Sunday Jun 2016

Posted by ninevoices in Christine, Heard lately, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

I came across the following quote from the poet, novelist and critic Randall Jarrell:

…a novel is a prose narrative of some length that has something wrong with it…

(From The Unread Book, which I can’t find a link to anywhere.)

I found this strangely encouraging.   I suppose the trick is to make sure it has exactly the right thing wrong with it…

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