Visiting with Melissa Febos

by Claire Guyton, Art + Life Editor

What inspired your essay “Giving up the Ghost”? 

The same thing that inspires most of my work; the urge to understand a little bit more about myself, other people, the world. Honestly, after only a little while, I thought back on the act of selling my dominatrix gear at the eBay store, and couldn’t quite believe I’d done it. It’s the kind of thing you’d think a writer would do simply for funny material, but I hadn’t. It just seemed like a practical idea at the time.

Tell us about your writing process—either generally or specifically with regard to the birth and development of this essay. 

I’d had the idea for the essay kicking around in my head for a while, but hadn’t started on anything. I was in the midst of pre-publication madness with my memoir, and hadn’t written anything but emails and email interviews for months, really. I was starting to get that soul-sickness that comes from being a writer who isn’t writing (from the outside it looks a lot like grumpiness) and so I parked my ass in a chair one weekend and wrote it. I immediately felt better. My other primary reason for writing is because I generally feel like shit when I don’t.

All writers have favorite words we have to guard against over-using. What are yours?

Well, after reading through the final manuscript of my memoir, my agent told me to search for how many times the word “desire” was used. So I used the “search” function in Word, and it was something like 500 times. Turns out, there are a lot of synonyms for the word desire. Not that surprising, I suppose. I don’t know that I love the word so much, but it’s a theme that I can’t seem to get away from.

What does your writing space look like?

Wherever I can clear a space and open my computer, I can write. I have to be that flexible, because long stretches of time at home aren’t so easy to come by. I’ve trained myself to be able and willing to write for 20 minutes on the train, or in any coffee shop, or in my head.

But I do have a very nice office setup at home. My girlfriend and I live in a totally unhip neighborhood so deep in Brooklyn that it’s almost Queens, because we wanted a place big enough to have a real office. It’s totally worth it. I love a big desk, next to a window, and I finally have one. My dog sometimes curls up under my legs while I’m working. In this photo, he’s under my old desk.

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*Contact Claire with any questions or suggestions for Hunger Mountain’s Art + Life section at hungermtnal@gmail.com.

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