After a rain week, the sun finally appears in Buenos Aires. Just in time to receive ELISABET BENAVENTthat he arrived in the country to appear in the full room at the Book Fair and meet some of his many Argentine fans. Although while posing for photos in a retirement hotel, one day before the event, he smiles and contrasts: “And that mine is the rains.”
Perhaps it is because his books seem made to accompany a gray afternoon: there is something in their stories that accommodates well to the rhythm of the intimate. Like herself, who talks without hurry and without poses, with that mixture of frankness and warmth that her characters also have. Those that took her through 22 novels and that even reached the Netflix screen, with global successes such as “Valeria”. Your latest creation, “Snob” (Sum), he presented a new challenge: writing from the voice of a man. An imperfect protagonist, ironic and at the same time. Like everything in his universe, tailored to human contradictions.
NEWS: How much did it cost to put a man’s skin?
ELISABET BENAVENT: Quite. I was very difficult to find Alejo’s voice. I was running for months, until I gave the tone. I needed it to be a moron, but one adorable. You knew that it could be redeemed. And for that I also needed it to be a male voice in the first person, because if he did not explain it, the second chapter would have sent him to the Garete. It was a challenge, but I think that as writers we have the obligation to put the awkward things. I don’t believe in repeating a formula that has worked.
NEWS: Is it easier or more difficult is to write now that you have all the eyes of the world on top?
Benavent: Right now it’s difficult. Because I am a single anguish, I am always worried, so vertigo enters me. In addition, there are 22 novels and I am very afraid to repeat. We are also living rare times, very positive in that you have real time feedback that allows you to learn a lot, but at the same time the opinions are completely subjective and contradictory. You end with a kind of mental omelet and lose your own focus.
NEWS: How do you protect against that?
Benavent: My editor helps me a lot. She always separates me a little of these thoughts “What if I don’t like it? What if anyone feels disappointed?” It helps me to think what I want to tell apart from the love story, what is the weight of the book, how I will want to remember when time passes.
NEWS: He has become the queen of the romantic novel, would you like to investigate other genres?
Benavent: I think mine is rather romantic comedy, because for me humor is super important, it is one of the tools with which to face life and defend it and take it as a banner. And I think that romantic comedy is a genre that mixes very well with many others. “All those things that I will tell you tomorrow” I already mix science fiction. I think I will investigate. I want to have fun, and then I think the reader will do it too.
NEWS: Several of his books have reached TV. Today writes with that visual structure in mind?
Benavent: No, because I think the process perverts. You can’t even think about the opinions that people are going to have when you read it. You cannot think in commercial terms when you are writing, because the engine changes from which you are doing it. If you are writing to sell, something fails. Besides that it does not come out. But it is true that by force of reading scripts, of being in a team in which everyone is very overturned to teach yourself and are part of the project, something has left. It certainly influences the way I write today, I realize that I am doing more dynamic scenes.
NEWS: Is it a dream of reaching the audiovisual?
Benavent: I think the audiovisual and the narrative are needed. Because the narrative needs the visual to reach more homes, and the visual needs content. For example, what is happening with “El Eternalauta” right now. It is a graphic novel that many people did not know and are surely going to approach. It is a virtuous circle.
NEWS: He has written many sagas. Does it difficult to say goodbye to the characters?
Benavent: A bit. But from a while this part I think I have learned that they are like summer loves. You have to know how to say goodbye so that the memory remains beautiful. Because when you take a lot of love for a character, you are tempted to extend things. It has happened to me in projects, and now looking back I am sorry for not shortening certain stories.
NEWS: He turned 40, how do they feel him?
Benavent: I have a friend who is always with the joke that the 40 are not the problem, the problem is that then the 41 … (laughs). I carry them well. Although, like when you turn 30, it hangs on us like a Damocles sword. “At 30 you have to have the work of your life, a house, a couple.” We are already taking away that weight a little, but with the 40 the same happens. And I do not feel how I thought at 20 that I would feel at 40. I will not say that they are the new 30, because they are wonderful being what they are, but we live in a very old society, especially with women. For us, beauty matters first, then age, and finally our worth. We are going to start turning it, because the years are experience, and experience is wisdom. We become more wise. We have more dark circles and more rooster legs, the meat falls, but we have to hug it. I try that my characters are also a mirror of how I’m looking for a way to make this trip friendlier.
NEWS: And writing so much love, what about the story itself?
Benavent: I am very good and very happy. When I was 20 and something, I had a more grandiloquent idea of love, of these great statements, and I have realized that love is micro romanticisms. I don’t want you to love me big, I want you to love me every day and well. I want them to take care of me and I want me to take care of me. These passionate loves, these pulls and loosen, are not for me. It is evident that without problem there is no history, but in the books I want the problems to be landed, everyday, that are not toxic.
NEWS: He writes many sex scenes, do they cost him?
Benavent: Lot. And in fact, in each book there is less. I have realized what one more tool for history has to be, it can’t be splashed because yes. It is true that he builds the language of lovers, and it is very easy to use a sex scene to strengthen intimacy among the characters. My challenge is just to include them when the story will advance. That are necessary. The line that separates the erotic and the naturalness of the Chabacano is very thin, so I invest a lot of time in those scenes. They are the ones who correct the most.
NEWS: Do you feel that you have found a niche in that Hot part? Many authors flee …
Benavent: Notice that I think the sexual tension is given better to solve it. In addition, it seems more fun. But as a reader I need to solve it, because when there are stories in which you are there, come, come, come, and the time comes and everything happens “the next morning”, I cannot avoid thinking about how those two people have communicated. And it is not a morbid issue -because we all like that spicy point -but because it is important for history. I think these books do is normalize the erotic. I raised it as a consumer of literature, I do not like that curtain the next day, it seems to me that I create a dark space in which many things fit and not all are good. If we break that curtain and put light, we also have the opportunity to talk about a lot of issues, such as female pleasure. To put women as a desiring and unwanted object. Talking about the things that can happen and are not ideal.
NEWS: Many young authors who want to start publishing, what do you recommend?
Benavent: That read a lot, and not only of the genre they write. It is important not to have prejudices either as a writer or as a reader. That they form, because it is very good to transgress the norm, but first you have to know it. In addition, training is somewhat continuous: I still learn to put commas. Finding a third party that can tell us if something is very slow, if a dialogue is not credible, if something would extend it. And write without fear, because we do not write on stone, everything can be erased and start over.
