What Are You Working On?
Writers on their works in progress

Laura Krughoff

fiction writer

Laura Krughoff received her MFA in fiction writing from the University of Michigan in 2003, where her work was awarded the Leonard and Eileen Newman Writing Prize in fiction. Her stories have appeared, or are forthcoming shortly in such journals as The Seattle Review, Other Voices, The Threepenny Review, and Room of One's Own, among others. She currently lives and teaches writing in Chicago.

 
I have recently finished a collection of short stories, but I continue to think about, return to, and tinker with a couple of the individual stories even though many of them have found their way into print and the collection is currently looking for a home as a book.

I am more actively, however, working on a first draft of a novel. I've been mulling over the novel idea for a number of years, and I started typing away at stuff I thought might somehow work its way into the novel just over a year ago. But I'd say I've only really been drafting the thing, in any serious fashion, since August of 2005. The novel is about a brother-sister pair whose relationship is defined in many ways by the brother's mental illness. There's also a fair amount of marching band music and cross-dressing mixed into the plot.

The first draft of a short story has always been my least favorite part of the writing process -- I've always felt subject to the tyranny of finishing. For that reason, I've been really surprised by how liberating and fun diving into a draft of a novel has been. I'm enjoying the feeling of having a work in progress -- knowing I get to be with these characters and this material for a good long while.

 
How did you decide to write about siblings?

I'm not sure if I had the idea for this relationship between a brother and a sister first or if the idea for the characters came after a friend who works in the mental health field told me about a psychiatric disorder known as Shared Delusions. In either case, what I'd thought would be a short story about a brother and sister who play drums in a high school marching band became something far more complicated and more fun.

 
What's been hard to learn or figure out? What challenges are you overcoming?

Trying to learn how plot functions in a novel-length work of fiction has been the hardest thing for me. I'm disinclined to think of writing as "wasted" even if it's never going to see the light of day, but I did spend a lot of time more or less casting about for what the scope of the novel should be in the simplest terms -- how much time passes, are childhood memories just back-story or are they the beginning of the narrative -- that sort of thing.

I have found that when I'm feeling really stuck, or when I've been working on other stuff and I've been away from the novel longer than I'd like, it's incredibly helpful to write letters to myself. I write these long, rambling letters in which I tell myself everything I know about the novel and the characters. I ask myself all sorts of questions about stuff I don't know. And I let myself get really sentimental about the narrative -- what I think it's about, how I hope it's read, why I think it matters, how I think it relates to the thematic concerns of my short stories, etc. I've gone back a few times to read these letters and I've been surprised at how useful they've been. Sometimes an off-hand comment I made to myself months ago suddenly seems surprisingly prescient as I grapple with a turn in the plot I hadn't even foreseen back when I was writing the letter.

 
What has been the most rewarding part of working on this project?

Getting started. I'll begin a short story at the drop of a hat (and often walk away from one with similar ease), but I've long felt a bit shy of the idea of a novel. It seemed like such a serious thing to even attempt to begin. I thought I needed more education, more experience, more maturity, more perspective, more time, or more something. Perhaps I need one or more of these to finish successfully, but it feels good to begin.

 
When do you expect (or hope) to finish, and what's next for the project? Do you have a book contract, or prospects?

I don't know when I'll finish. I'm assuming I'm looking at a project that will be measured in years. The novel is being shopped around as a proposal with my story collection at the moment, but I spend as little time thinking about that and as much time thinking about what happens in the next chapter as possible.

Links

Shared delusions, also known as folie à deux

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published 2 April 06 on Too Beautiful. email copyright 2006 Mark Pritchard, Bernal Heights, San Francisco