Bestselling Author and Poet Joy Sullivan Gives Us a Masterclass on How to Put Our Hearts on the Page

Joy Sullivan has an almost alarming lack of pretense when talking about writing. There's no inclination of lofty artist talk or sweeping grand statements about how to build prose. Sullivan, an author, poet, and founder of the writing community Sustenance, is raw and honest, like a staring child who breaks into a smile.

"I still struggle with fear of the page," Sullivan admits.

What's surprising to hear this is knowing how impactful of a writer Sullivan is. To read her poetry is to feel like you know her and she knows you. Her words drip with humanness, as does her bestselling book Instructions for Traveling West. But a closer look reveals that is just the key. As Sullivan says, writing is really a "grappling with the self."

Sullivan's words are particularly kismet to us right now, as this is the week Maria releases her new book, I Am Maria, which offers poems that grapple with all the humanness of life, including grief, love, loss, identity, and healing. In this light, we asked Sullivan for some of the writing directions she gives her students. Where do we start if we want to grapple with ourselves on the page?

We think you'll find that her wisdom is as real as she is. "All the best instruction I give writers," she says, "is always the internal pep talk that I've given myself over decades of feeling terrified to write."

A CONVERSATION WITH JOY SULLIVAN

Let's start with the daunting part: fear. What if we're eager to find ourselves on the page but afraid? What do you say?

What has helped me overcome this is realizing that fear of the page is usually discomfort with sitting with the self—because that's where you're laid bare. That's where you have to listen and hear yourself. So sometimes, when I'm sitting down, I recognize that it's not so much writing that I fear; it's that I'm going inward. And it's very normal to have some resistance to that at first. It's very human. That's why meditation is hard. That's why yoga is hard. That's why any kind of practice of meaningful self-inquiry is hard. So I tell people: Accept that a little resistance is human. It doesn't mean that you're not meant to write, or that you're not a real writer. Creativity is a human birthright.

As an educator and the founder of your writing community, you counsel people on writing. What are some tips you can offer?

I like telling folks to write from the belly, not the brain. Meaning, when I'm doing a first draft, I'm not writing with an internal editor. There's so much time to think about editing, cutting, and form later. But a critical eye now isn't helpful, just like a critical eye wouldn't be helpful if you're sitting down to meditate. You're trying to unarchive what is there, what is present, what is with you, and what wants to come to the surface. The beautiful thing is that it always emerges, it just needs space.

Brendan Constantine, one of my favorite poets, has said that when you sit down to write, where it's going and what people will think of it is none of your business. So I say, the weirder the better. Instead of saying, I'm going to try and write something good, I say, I'm going to try and write something really weird. And I'll do a stream of consciousness. If I'm writing a poem about tulips, suddenly I have this memory of being in my grandfather's garden, and I'll follow that.

When I was experiencing writer's block on my first deadline for Instructions for Traveling West, my publicist kept saying, 'Joy right where it's warm.' This is a practice of being with your body, accepting that it's going to be hard, and then following what feels really interesting to write, what your subconscious is clueing you towards. You'll find, this is usually memories and things that feel really warm. So, write about what you remember. Write about what you wish you didn't know. The things in our brain that keep turning over are often really productive to explore on the page.

Going back to when you said "creativity is a human birth right," it can be common to get in our own way and think, I'm not a real writer or I'm not a real poet. What else holds people back from exploring on the page?

What holds people back, and what has held me back, is the feeling that you have to write a certain kind of poem or essay. We think that because the poets and writers we love have written this kind of poem or essay, I recently had poet Chen Shen in Sustenance and he said, 'All the poems that you love already exist. So, write the poem or write the essay that you are supposed to write, because that is what the world needs.' Hearing that was freeing for me. Years after I got a master's in poetry, I hardly wrote it all because I couldn't write a poem like Sharon Olds. But then I started writing Joy Sullivan poems, and that's what finally released that.

What has been amazing to see as you've educated and watched people find themselves on the page?

It's amazing to see people step into their sovereignty through the page. I was just in a workshop with a bunch of writers, and everybody in the workshop had had very similar childhoods where they had experienced some level of trauma or isolation or othering. I came to the page very early on, because I was always interrupted as a child, in a family where I was the youngest. So, the page was where I could speak without interruption. And so when I see people coming to the page for the first time, even that, in itself, is a reclamation of a voice. They've been drawn to write because there's some story that needs to be expressed.

Again, creativity is a right and it is a human need to express what the body needs to say. So, it's beautiful to see that light up on the page for the first time, and it can be terrifying for folks, too. It's holy work, and I feel honored to get to do it.

Joy Sullivan is a poet, teacher, and author of the national bestseller, Instructions for Traveling West. She received a Masters in poetry from Miami University and has served as the poet-in-residence for the Wexner Center for the Arts. You can read her thoughts on the creative life in her Substack newsletter, Necessary Salt.