Prior to working in comics, Ferris was a freelance illustrator and toy designer. After contracting West Nile virus at age forty in 2002, Ferris became paralyzed from the waist down and lost the use of her right hand, preventing her from drawing and doing freelance work. The origin for My Favorite Thing Is Monsters was a screenplay Ferris wrote of "a werewolf lesbian girl being enfolded into the protective arms of a Frankenstein trans kid". The theme of two outsiders was then carried over to a short story she wrote in 2004. While attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for an M.F.A. in creative writing, Ferris taught herself drawing again and began work on My Favorite Thing Is Monsters to recover. Starting in 2010, it took Ferris six years to complete the manuscript. Her thesis formed the first 24 pages of the graphic novel and secured her a publisher. Ferris often worked sixteen-hour days and lived very frugally while working on the graphic novel. She averaged a rate of around a page every two days. Ferris has said that the process required effort to manipulate her drawing hand properly, which, even after recovery, did not regain the same dexterity.
