I headed out on a sunny Manchester evening to an event hosted by University of Manchester Press, publishers of Melissa Febos’ most recent book Body Work (2022). I attended the University of Manchester about five thousand years ago for my undergrad English & Philosophy degree at not the best time of my life, and have spent so many nights in the Students’ Union gig venues trying to dance or stumble my feet free from the sticky floors. So it was an absolute delight to attend a literary event in one of these spaces, sober, and looking ahead to getting stuck back into book-loving academia in September.
Body Work The Radical Power of Personal Narrative is described: “In this bold and exhilarating mix of memoir and writing guide, Melissa Febos tackles the emotional, psychological, and physical work of writing intimately while offering an utterly fresh examination of the storyteller's life and the challenges it presents.”
Award-winning, Sheffield born author and poet Helen Mort facilitated the event and it was such a generous conversation between two excellent women. You know it’s going to be good when the interviewer bins off their planned question order after the first one because the discussion is sparking so many other points of interest.
What follows is part reflection, part recollection, the conversation as true to me.
Push through to discomfort
One of the first talking points was about the act of writing, and an exercise Febos uses with her students asking them to repeatedly write about personal experiences - how this shifts and changes the narrative and what comes through, and how there is often an initial splurge followed by a feeling that they are done. Febos described a crucial point in writing - ‘when you think you are done? That’s just the beginning.’ There is a place beyond that, a place that is often scary and always uncomfortable, where the interesting work starts to happen. What we can get down on paper with relative ease is what is resting near the top, ready to be skimmed off. It’s only with patience and courage that we start to dive beneath the surface.
‘Navel-gazing’
Helen Mort tied together the terminology of ‘navel-gazing’ with the title of Body Works, the body of work of a writer, and the embodied nature of writing memoir, querying how Febos feels about the view of memoirists as self-obsessed and indulgent.
[Side note: This is definitely something I am navigating as I prepare to start a heuristic/autoethnographic approach to my doctorate, centering myself in the research, and not wanting to be the wanker that has to explain i’m doing a PhD on myself… ]
A point of answer that stuck with me was that memoirists are not likely to be the extrovert, oversharing, overconfident types because those people are not bursting with a story that has been held in. A memoirist is more likely to be someone who has been shy, or conflicted about sharing their story, or troubled by self-doubt but who has something in them demanding to be told. This always brings me to wondering about the motivation of writing autobiographically - whether for therapeutic purging, or for allowing others to feel less alone. Neither of which diminishes the potential impact of alchemising life through words, and these definitely aren’t the only two motivations.
The inner PR person
A voice to silence: our inner PR person. The one that tells you not to show your dark side, or to reveal your vulnerability or flaws. The one who pulls a face at those really honest, ‘less likeable’ moments and tries to soften or censor them before they go public. The one who is more concerned with appearances than truth. Bin them off.
I’d like to amplify the candid, critical friend voice. The one that will interrogate your intentions, that will move you forward, and that will also challenge: “Hey, are you looking after yourself in this?”
Sex is just another scene
Febos spoke about the cringey feeling that can creep up on a writer when it comes to getting sex on the page. Febos said she approaches it as just another scene, with the same attention to detail, senses, and function within the story as that approach demystifies The Sex Scene and makes it one part of the whole. She referenced the fact that many people have trauma surrounding sex which can make it a lot more difficult to navigate, and on a lighter note that all genital euphemisms are awful, so we are best not overthinking the whole thing.
Compassion for the character of self
Memoirists must constantly wrestle with themselves - the self that is writing the thing (should they write it? What impact does that act have? Are they important enough to write about?), the future self that will answer for it, and the self that is being put down in black and white: the character at the heart of the memoir. I loved the idea that writing about oneself as a character is a way to create a distance that allows for a curiosity and compassion more easily directed at someone else than oneself.
“Who does my silence benefit?”
Helen Mort shared an unsurprising but frustrating experience she had when talking about writing autobiographically, when someone asked what her partner must think about that. It’s a deep-wriggling fear of mine about writing about my experiences that it will upset someone or cause hurt; the people-pleasing, fawn response comes right to the surface as soon as I start to write from a vulnerable and honest place. There are things here that the writer must remember: our story is just that, ours, and will always differ from the perspective of someone else, even someone who was there for the same events.
It is natural to worry and wonder about what to share, how to share it and who might be impacted by the sharing. When writing, if confronted with this anxiety, Febos has asked herself who would benefit from her silence. This is such a powerful question.
Febos shared a fun anecdote about memoirist Mary Karr’s response to the question about what response she would have to someone unhappy with her version of events: “Write your own book”. Febos said she wishes she could be so acerbic and forthright, but did battle with this. She talked about how, when her first book Whip Smart (2010) came out, chronicling her college years experiences as a professional dominatrix, it was a shock to her family who knew nothing about the contents. She said she has reached a more balanced place now where she doesn’t necessarily hold back, but will approach someone to share a draft of what she has written to open up a dialogue about the implications and their feelings. These are not easy conversations to have but do, she insists, make things better in the long run. She has on occasion decided to not publish something whether following one of these conversations or through her own misgivings about it; I wonder if the act of writing it is cathartic enough, even if it does not reach an audience.
Febos also mentioned writer Anne Lamott, and after the event I found a 2007 video interview with Lamott discussing this issue. She spoke of how writing a fictionalised version of events can offer a solution if the intention is to reduce the harm of sharing a story, but she also says, “I tell you this is my deepest belief: that every single thing that happened to you is yours and you own it and you don’t have to keep their awful secrets.”
Just keep writing the shite
One of the final audience questions of the evening asked what you do when you write and it is at first “just shite.” Febos reassured us that her writing always starts off as shite. And stays shite for quite some time. That is where the work comes in. Her advice was just to keep writing - keep on revisiting and reworking that shite until it becomes not shite.
It was a real, honest, and hopeful note to end on especially for us shite-wranglers in the audience.
A bloody lovely evening.
I initially came to Melissa Febos’ work through my desire to absorb any and all writing about addiction as I made sense of my own. I first read Abandon Me (2017), a collection of essays about a deep desire for connection, then her first book Whip Smart (2010). I am yet to read Girlhood (2021), as I have to steady myself before delving into themes of consent, bodies and sexuality, and each time another piece of therapy, recovery and The Work slots into place I feel more ready to pick it up. I will no doubt blog again once I've finished Body Work, possibly covering the others too.
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