Write from the belly, not the brain: A Q&A with poet Joy Sullivan
Asking yourself "is it true?" will transform your writing life and your living life too
Welcome to Revisionary, a Q&A series where artists talk about revising, redoing, and how to make what you create even better.
One day last summer I got an Instagram DM from a writer I’d started following a few months before. She’d seen I was a writer who lived in Portland, Oregon and wondered if I wanted to get a coffee and talk about writing sometime. That coffee—actually a walk in Laurelhurst park where we watched ducks at the pond and talked about our books—was the beginning of one of my most cherished friendships.
, the writer in question, is the author the poetry collection Instructions for Traveling West—a national bestseller! She writes , a monthly newsletter with prompts for writing/life and essays that often wind up going viral. She is a brilliant teacher and runs a writing community called Sustenance. And those are just some professional accolades; if I sung her praises as a human and friend we’d be here all day.I knew immediately that Joy would have so many wonderful things to say about the writing life, approaching the page, revision, and what she does with pieces that have hit “the dead end of the failure wall” (a phrase that will live in my head forever).
I am so thrilled to share this Revisionary Q&A with you all.
Tove Danovich: Can you introduce yourself and talk about the work you do?
Joy Sullivan: I am a poet and an educator and community founder. My first book, my first collection of poems came out a year ago with Penguin Random, and now I'm thinking a lot about essays. I also host a writing community called Sustenance where I teach people basically what I like to write and like to learn, which is both poetry and essays. And I also write Woman in the World on Substack.
TD: What does revision as a word or a process mean to you?
JS: I think a lot about that quote that Ocean Vuong says where he says to revise would be to edit the boy that was. There's also this sort of honoring that you wrote a poem or an essay at a very specific time and it becomes a sort of time capsule or archive to the writer that you were during that time.
I think that helps me when I'm feeling that very familiar stress around things that I wrote that I wouldn't necessarily write anymore. I just found something I wrote 10 years ago. I was googling something else and I came across this piece and I thought, oh my God, I can't believe I put this out into the world.
“When you start asking this question, “Is it true?”, it transforms not only your writing life, but your living life.”
-Joy Sullivan
On the page, the big question is always, “Have I surprised myself?” If I can draw a straight line between where I thought I was going in the beginning of the essay and where I end up, I inevitably don't feel like I've done the thought work to make that thing pleasurable to myself.
The macro revision and drafting is finding that element of surprise. And then I move into the micro revision, which is actually my favorite, which is that common phrase, “The best words in the best order.”
TD: I feel like that kind of dovetails to my next question, which was going to be if you could talk about any kind of piece lately you were working on that wasn't working and how you approached it.
JS: Well, one of my favorite exercises is to take a failed poem. And again, usually it's a poem that I just don't think has opened something in me. Usually my temperature in writing is always like if I'm not emotional, if I haven't shed a tear—I think it's Robert Frost who says, “No tears for the writer, no tears for the reader.”
But that's hard to manufacture. Sometimes you're just like, this isn't working. I'm not feeling emotionally connected to it. The one revision strategy I've been doing, that's been really helpful in my poems, and it has been literally to take the piece, print it off, and to rearrange all of the lines. Inevitably, anytime that you interrupt the linear brain, the narrative structure of the brain, you're going to get a more interesting piece. And the reason I like doing this with a failed piece that's truly hit the dead end of the failure wall is because whatever was promising initially in that draft still exists, but often it's a structural issue.
Often you have said something too obviously, and when you rearrange it in its nonlinear form, you get to something more true.
“I always tell my writers ‘write from the belly and not the brain.’ Until that gets activated, I can write a lot of content, but I don't think I can write a poem.”
-Joy Sullivan
TD: That seems slightly less terrifying to do with a poem than an essay. I'm thinking about the chapters of the book that I'm working on now, and I'm like, how would I even rearrange it? I don't know. So many words!
JS: I think one thing you could do and I have seen people do is literally just section it out in paragraphs and even just see if there's a different structural way in. Or I often will challenge myself to always take out the first answer, the first paragraph and then the last paragraph and just see what opens and what little door emerges.
TD: That's a more approachable version.
JS: I'm just imagining the chaos that ensues with people with novels, you know, whole chapters.
TD: I feel like it could be fun to just physically cut it all up and literally throw it into the air and have it rain down around you and be like, whatever I pick up…
Other than that sense of surprise in a piece, are there other things that tell you when something isn't working or isn't finished? What is the sense where you're like, this is good, it can live in the world now?
JS: I don't want to get too esoteric with that answer. It's a very felt sense for me. It's just a very embodied. I tend to have the sort of truly activated belly in which I'm like, oh, this doesn't just sound nice on the page, it feels really good in my body. And I think that's a multi-sensorial experience where the piece not only has communicated something interesting but it's sensory driven enough that it's able to begin to recreate that experience in the reader so that they're having their own experience.
The more I read it and feel alive in my own skin, the greater chances that readers are to feel it alive in their own skin. I always tell my writers write from the belly and not the brain. Until that gets activated, I can write a lot of content, but I don't think I can write a poem.
TD: Is that something that you feel like you've kind of learned what that feeling is in your body over time? I'm imagining Joy 10 years ago. What did that look like compared to now?
JS: It’s kind of a necessary thing. And I think it's one of the reasons that makes poetry or writing in general so exhausting is it because it is tapped into this full body emotional experience for you. And so if you're not having any kind of catharsis or any kind of angst over it, you probably haven't gone anywhere interesting enough. I used to think my sweet spot was right between one and two glasses of wine. That was where I could really access the well of emotion. As somebody who doesn't drink much anymore, it's been like, well, how do I still access that?
The question that I keep asking myself in revision that keeps pushing me, is “Is that true?” And actually, what's the thing that I could say about it that would be even more true than what I just wrote? It might not sound as nice lyrically but would it be more true?
That’s kind of what I always go to, because we can write a lot of beautiful things that aren't true but I think the body knows instinctually when something's not true.
I've read lots of pieces that I feel like are visually, aesthetically, lyrically beautiful, but I don't trust them in the body. And so it's always important to be asking, did that feel true in my stomach to say out loud?
When I started my poetry career and I was writing on Instagram, I was writing a lot of really bad work because I was mimicking things that I thought would be popular and would do well, but they weren't true. I was neither motivated to write nor did I enjoy what I wrote. It's interesting to find when you start asking this question, “is it true?”, how it transforms not only your writing life, but your living life.
TD: I fondly remember that stage in my earlier writing where you're copying everything, but you're also breathing everything in. I think that that's an important stage, even if I'm happy it doesn't live on the internet.
JS: You have to go through that stage. You have to imitate a lot of people and mimic a lot of people. It's kind of like when you go to the bakery and you don't know exactly what you want: you're kind of undecided between the olive oil cake and the lemon and the raspberry and the mint chocolate chip brownie or whatever it is. And then you ask the person behind the counter what they want and they say, “oh, the lemon tart's the best.” And you're like, “actually, I’ll have the brownie.”
Sometimes in writing you try on a bunch of different things and have people suggest a lot of different ways of writing to you that you actually try on in your body to know what you actually want and how you actually sound.
This idea of “finding your voice” is very trendy. And I don't know how you arrive mysteriously at that other than trying a lot of things that are wrong and feeling the discomfort physically in yourself. Sometimes things have to be suggested to you so you can resist them.
TD: Yeah, that's how I decide what I want for dinner. I imagine myself eating the thing and whether I’m happy in my imagination.
JS: I've written about these limit lines. Give me a limit line, give me a prompt so I can resist it and write the thing I actually need to write. Writers love prompts. And I don't think that's because prompts are magical. They're usually just something to resist and say, for you, I don't actually want to write that. Here's the thing I do want.
When I was doing dance class, I was struggling with which dances to move and the instructor said, okay, Joy, you don't know what dances to do here. Do these three moves over and over and over again. And so I did. And halfway through the dance, my body sort of organically erupted into new interesting movement. Without the constraint of “you can only do these three things,” I don't think my body could have resisted to find the organic movement it wanted. And I think the same is true with writing. We sort of mimic until the true voice gets loud enough to be able to challenge and resist that.
TD: When a piece is difficult for whatever reason, you kind of always have the two choices, to keep going and working on it or to give up. What are your thoughts are on letting things go? Is that a track that you take more often or do you think, “I'm going to keep working on this forever”?
JS: A reframe that helped me early in my writing career was to see so much of the writing process is also thought work. Especially being a poet. I was just looking at Marie Howe's drafts of her poems and the tremendous amount of beauty that lives in the white space of her stanzas. When you go back and look at her drafts, she has put so much that she's then taken out, but you can't possibly cheat that process. The echo of what she wrote before, even though it doesn't appear in the final version, it still persists.
I don't really see failed essays or field drafts as failures. I just see them as part of the thought work process that's helping me clarify an idea that later I hope I'm going to get right.
But I've also had the experience—this is particularly true with very traumatic writing, nonfiction about very traumatic memories or painful memories—that I've written something many times and failed to write it. And then years later, I've come back and discovered it's a five-line poem but I wrote it four times first as an essay.
But that feels really necessary. It feels like paths I have to go down.
TD: You've already given so much good advice for someone struggling with a revision, but I was wondering if you have anything else that comes to mind.
JS: I mean, I just would say be less precious with it. I also say this to myself. I'm an incredibly precious person about my writing and I also want to be efficient. But every time I push myself, I would say 90% of the time, I go somewhere that is better than my initial impulse.
What I see in teaching a lot of writers is we are so relieved to find an exit out of the poem that we don't really explore maybe the most beautiful door to exit on. Make sure you've tried a bunch of different doors.
Again, that thought work really strengthens your brain to be able to find those doors in the future. So it's not wasted time. But I think we get out of pieces, essays, poems, whatever it is too early. We're just so grateful we found an exit sign.
TD: What is inspiring you lately in your own work or where do you turn for inspiration?
JS: I think it was
who talked about always needing to turn on her literary brain before she writes. She always reads a little bit. This seems like such a basic hack but I can't ever come to the page cold. I always have to read for five minutes something that feels like really chewy, beautiful writing.I will just kind of pace myself when I'm writing. I'll read something really beautiful and then I'll write for a while and I'll read something beautiful and I'll write for a while.
I love to read out of the genre that I’m writing in. I love to read something where I'm almost not distracted by the line breaks or the stanzas or the mechanics of the piece because that turns on my teaching brain. I just want to have an immersive language experience. So as a poet, I tend to read a lot of fiction. When I'm writing essays, I'll read a lot of poetry.
TD: Can you talk about a favorite piece that you're either working on or just completed and what's exciting about it to you?
JS: Well, I'll just talk about the piece that I'm working on right now, which is a piece about incarcerated women. I went recently with a friend, Nikki, to visit women in prison. She was doing a yoga workshop that I got to participate in. To have that experience of going inside a local women's prison and chatting with some of the folks who are on the inside was just a really beautiful experience. I was so moved by this detail to realize that it is illegal to dance in prison. You're not allowed. How can you experience transformation when you cannot move your body, when you can literally move trauma or grief out of the body and the ways that the body knows how.
I was really compelled by this idea of what happens when we can't dance, what happens when we can't move. And so I've been just circling that.
TD: I’ve never heard about that rule either. It makes me wonder too, where is the line between dancing and not dancing?
JS: Exactly. Who decided? What's a gesture and what's a dance move, right? And it just brings up this whole beautiful, fascinating conversation about the liberation of the erotic and why anything that's perceived as erotic is terrifying to that which must be contained and personal sovereignty too.
TD: I'll look forward to reading it when it's done. Is there anything else you want to share about revision, either in your own work or maybe in how you approach it as a teacher if something comes to mind?
JS: The power of revision for me is tricking my brain to see it fresh for the first time. And there's a lot of different ways you can go about doing that. My sister is my editor and we're on different time zones because she's on the east coast. So a lot of times I'll be finishing a piece at like 8 PM and I'll send it to her and it's 11 PM her time.
Simply the act of sending her a piece does something to the piece in my brain where I'll look at the pieces if I were her and I'll start noticing things that I want to change. I'll start noticing things that are weak. I'll start coming back with a different mind really.
likes to say, “time rarely makes anything worse,” which I also think is good advice when it comes to revision. I often tell writers, however you can trick your brain—if it's sending it to somebody, if it's changing the font, if it's stepping away for a few days, if it's pretending that you're an editor for a poetry magazine, whatever it is—into seeing it fresh for the first time, you'll see not only ways you might want to be less obvious but you'll see opportunities you’d probably miss.
Thank you again to Joy Sullivan for sharing so many great lessons! You can follow her work on Instagram, subscribe to her newsletter, and buy her wonderful poetry collection Instructions for Traveling West.
If you want to suggest someone I should interview for this series, please comment below with a name and where to find them. If you’re interested in being interviewed for this series, please fill out this form.
You can directly support my work by upgrading to a paid subscription to A Little Detour, sharing this post with someone who might enjoy it, or buying a copy of my book Under the Henfluence. If you love this newsletter but can’t afford to become a paid subscriber, send me an email to get a comped subscription. I’m just happy you’re here!
Because all writers have a never-ending hope of finding ways to make writing financially sustainable, I’ve opened a Bookshop.org affiliate page. If you buy any of the books I mention in this newsletter, I will get a small commission and will use it to buy myself more books.
Honored to get to chat with you, friend!
Really enjoyed this interview and Joy’s inspiration.