The author of Lapvona on making a writer’s cave of her bed

Ottessa Moshfegh doesn’t have to travel far from bed to write each morning–because bed is often her preferred place to write, usually but not only in the mornings. “Being in bed arrests a bit of my anxiety so that I can focus,” she says. “It’s like being in a cave. And with my head on a pillow, I feel like I can turn my gaze into a dream. The imagination space is just there, in my blind spot. I find I produce my best work when I allow my mind to drift into that blind spot, so that my annoying brain isn’t so loud and antsy.” Outside her bedroom window a jungle reigns–giant Birds of Paradise, a bougainvillea climbing around a stone doorway to the road. Inside all is zen. The pair of Chinese watercolors on either side of her bed are “ancestor portraits,” bought by her husband because she is working on a novel set partly in Shanghai. “I haven’t traced my ancestry any further back than Mongolia, but I feel close to China in my heart,” she says. “The man and the woman feel like protectors of the bed. I worry sometimes if they mind being separated with that much space between them.”