Writer Unboxed

This was the first time ever that Spinner had trusted me with the keys to Mister Twisty’s, but at any rate I was feeling very tired myself, and for some reason, a little sad also. From the basement I could hear the hum of the giant cooling machines as I sprayed a little Windex on the counters to wipe away the stickiness, and rubbed down the swirl machines with chrome cleaner. And I was just about to go home when I heard, or thought I heard, a difference in the intensity of sound coming from below me. For a moment I thought I might be coming down with a cold, or maybe the flu myself, but when I shook my head and pressed my sinuses everything seemed fine. It was probably nothing, but just suppose there was some kind of a malfunction in the equipment downstairs, or even one of the old guys had had a heart attack and fallen into the machinery. We never really kept track of who went down and who came back up, and for all I know there might be someone down there, dying this very minute. I knew that Spinner had said he’d been working on the equipment a few weeks earlier, but I also knew that he had told me once, when I first began to work there, never to go down to the basement for any reason at all.

Don’t go down in the basement, Jonathan! Don’t!

Poet, short story writer, and novelist Jim Krusoe’s carved a niche following in literary circles with his ability to weave the mundane with the outrageous. His new release, Girl Factory, is the story of a sad-sack frozen yogurt clerk and how the surprising discovery of beautiful women incased in acidopholous cultures in the basement of the shop changes his life. Okay, this book is Weird with a capital W, but I found it exhilerating, smart, and funny. Nothing unfolded the way I thought it would, which is a tribute to Krusoe’s ability to keep the reader both off-balance and fascinated.

Missed part one? Click HERE. 

Krusoe, who teaches writing at Santa Monica College, is completely committed to the idea of exploring the novel in many different drafts, which he does until he feels the “tingle” — the moment when he knows he’s gotten it right. This method may not make for quick writing, but it means that Krusoe explores every possible authorial choice.

We’re please to present part two of our interview with Jim Krusoe.

Q: You’ve kept plot and prose tight in GIRL FACTORY. Do you plot in advance, or let it unfold organically? When it comes to editing, how do you know when you’ve done enough?

Jim Krusoe: I let it unfold, which is why it takes me so much time to write. Sometimes I have to do as many as a half dozen drafts before I even begin to figure out what a book is about. I wrote the first sixty pages of the novel I’m working on these days twelve different times, each with different settings and characters until I could feel that tingle on my skin. But I always tell myself that books are about four things: what the writer wants to write about; what allows the writer to write; what the reader wants; and then, the true subject of the book, which it will decide on its own.

Q: Your publisher, Tin House Books, is a small niche press. What are some of the advantages of a small publisher? Do you find that you‚re able to do things with them that you couldn‚t with some of the bigger commercial houses?

JK: The editors at Tin House Books were great. They took a long time working on the manuscript, and were patient through numerous drafts as I refined what the book was about. I’ve never had a big press, so can’t say what they would have done, but I don’t believe that a big press would have taken the book in it’s original, disheveled state.

Q: You also teach writing. Has teaching helped you with your own work? What are some of the common mistakes new writers make?

JK: As a teacher, I make all sorts of suggestions. I think this makes it more possible for me to listen to what other people have to say, and be willing to change things myself. I don’t know what mistakes other writers make, but I seem to be able to invent new ones by the minute. One of the worse is thinking a book is finished just because I’ve come to the end. I’ve learned the hard way that takes me on the average of 6 months to write a first draft, and then five years after that to think about it.

Q: Did that happen with ICELAND, your debut novel?

JK: ICELAND was a different sort of struggle, one about trying to figure out what was supposed to happen. I did have to completely rewrite the end (or else the deal was off, said the publisher) and that was the best thing that ever happened to that book.

Q: What craft books do you recommend for writers?

JK: Of course Flannery O’Connor’s Mystery and Manners, but I’m not sure anyone has actually learned anything from it other than the fact that O’Connor was wonderful. If I, or anyone, could learn writing from a book, there would be many more good writers out there, and it wouldn’t take me nearly so long to finish a book. I do think useful attitudes can be practiced and paying attention can be learned, however.

Q: What are you reading now?

JK: At this exact moment a novel called Montano’s Malady, by the Spanish writer Enrique Vila-Mates. It is completely ingrown and very wonderful.

Q: What’s next for you?

I have two more novels that are meant to follow Girl Factory. They are not about the same character, but both are also concerned with the idea of bringing people back from the dead, which is a metaphor, I suppose, for bringing them back from anywhere, or bringing anything back at all. I work on novel for a few months, put it aside, and then work on the other, back and forth, much as Sisyphus did in his writing days.

Girl Factory is available at online retailers everywhere.

Kathleen Bolton is co-founder of Writer Unboxed. She has written two novels under the pseudonym Cassidy Calloway: Confessions of a First Daughter, and Secrets of a First Daughter--both books in a YA series about the misadventures of the U.S. President's teen-aged daughter, published by HarperCollins.

Kathleen Bolton

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