"I talked to my wife, and she was like, 'You're probably tired. You've been writing this book non stop for six months, and you probably just need a break. Like, go get a gelato and chill out.' And I was like, 'I can't,' then I was like, 'All right, fine, I will.' And then I ate a bunch of ice cream and watched the Pam Anderson documentary on Netflix in the middle of the day. And after, I don't know, four or five days, I had an idea, and I was like, ready to get back to work," says Melissa Febos on Episode 472.

Melissa is the author of five books of nonfiction, including her latest, The Dry Season: A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex (Knopf).

In this conversation, we talk about:

• Writing in community
• Literary stardom
• Being a weirdo
• Wile E. Coyote
• The jealousy dragon
• The theory of bottoms
• And the liberation of quitting things

Really rich stuff. You can learn more about Melissa at melissafebos.com and follow her on IG @melissafebos.

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Show notes: brendanomeara.com

"We are sort of drinking from a fire hose of content right now. And it makes me wonder, because I feel like I'm stuck on this wheel that I have to produce all the time. Do I even want to write for money anymore? I don't know," says Cassidy Randall, author of the book Thirty Below, and back for her second Atavist story "The Longest Journey."

Writing is in her bones, so she's not quitting, but the freelance production wheel is tough.

We talk about:

• The productivity wheel
• Earning trust for stories
• Constructing a headline and subhead to focus a story
• And how best to immerse readers in a story

Learn more about Cassidy at cassidyrandall.com and @cassidyrandall on Instagram.

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Show notes: brendanomeara.com

"I've also learned in this rewilding experiment that so much of our time as writers takes place off the page, as we're thinking about our concepts, as we're doing research, and when I actually do come to the page and have a chance to actually type out these ideas, I've done so much pre-writing over the course of the previous season that that draft comes really easily to me," says Megan Baxter, author of three books of nonfiction, including Farm Girl: A Memoir (Green Writers Press).

Megan has got it figured out, man. She has won numerous national awards, including a Pushcart Prize. Her essay collection Twenty Square Feet of Skin was longlisted for the 2024 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. Megan got on my radar when I was doing Prefontaine research and I was thumbing through my stack of True Stories, that chapbook Creative Nonfiction used to put out. I saw this essay titled “On Running” and I was like well shoot, I need to study this. Then I reached out to her and she sent me her essay collections and her memoir Farm Girl, so we dig into that.

Megan’s work has appeared in The Threepenny Review, Hotel Amerika, River Teeth, and others. She lives in New Hampshire where she runs her own small farm and teaches creative writing through online courses and lessons. You can learn more about her at meganbaxterwriting.com and follow her on Instagram megan-baxter

• We talk about:
• Rewilding her writing
• Rabbit holes
• Actually living the ream
• Hyperattention
• The real housewives edit
• And how Pinterest helps with her writing

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Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm

Show notes: brendanomeara.com