K. R. Sands, author of “The Face Phantom,” Mütters around with Buñuel and Dalí:

The Mütter Museum of medical pathologies has over one hundred thousand artifacts, so looking around for story inspiration is usually nine-tenths distraction (“Wow, look at that!”) and one-tenth focus. But when I saw the face phantom, I knew immediately I had to write a story for it. It was the weirdest metaphor (synecdoche?) for the human condition I’d ever seen: sockets for eyes but no eyeballs, hair but no scalp, nostrils and mouth but no breathing organs, ears but no hearing organs. When I learned that its purpose was to hold eyeballs so medical students could practice eye surgery, I thought of Buñuel’s hand slicing open the eyeball at the opening of Un chien andalou. That scene dictated the time and place of the story. I’d been reading Dalí’s autobiography, and his idiosyncratic prose was easy to mimic, so I had fun creating the dialogue for the two film makers. (That remark in the story about “raping” the cinema audience comes from a statement by the real Buñuel.) Then I ran across a little news item on “sexual objectums” (objecta?)—people who are erotically aroused by inanimate objects. I thought, “Oh, Buñuel and Dalí would have loved this,” so I gave it to them.

My writing process is mostly thinking and researching, not actually writing. If the writing comes hard, it’s because I haven’t thought or researched enough. When the ideas gel, the writing happens pretty quickly. The first draft of this story was dreck—labored and confusing and unfocused—so I scrapped it. I often find it easier to start over than to revise a first draft, especially if I need to change the viewpoint, as I did in this case: I got out of the heads of Dalí and Buñuel and into the heads of Dr. Gilbert Nolastname and, er, Eulalia. (Her Poesque name was, I thought, in keeping with Dr. Gil’s gothic romanticism.) I have to admit, Eulalia became pretty real to me. The end of the story, where she dumps the doctor for Buñuel, was her idea, not mine. I’m just the amanuensis here, folks. Whenever I laugh out loud at the end of a story, I know not to tamper with the muse.