Today’s interview is with Mecca Jamilah Sullivan who offers insights into her own fiction writing process as well as tips for those writing in any form. Mecca’s newest novel, Big Girl, comes out this month and has just received a rave review from NYTimes Books! Pick it up today wherever books are sold.
Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, Ph.D. is the author of the novel Big Girl (W.W. Norton & Co./ Liveright) a 2022 most anticipated pick from Vulture, Ms, Goodreads and SheReads.com. Her previous books are The Poetics of Difference: Queer Feminist Forms in the African Diaspora (University of Illinois Press, 2021), and the short story collection, Blue Talk and Love (2015), winner of the Judith Markowitz Award for Fiction from Lambda Literary. She is Associate Professor of English at Georgetown University. A native of Harlem, she currently lives in Washington, DC. Read about all of her work online: http://www.meccajamilahsullivan.com
How did you begin writing?
As a child, I always enjoyed making up astories, writing poems, playing with language. But I started seeing myself as a writer in the 5th grade. A lot happened for me that year: I discovered Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf within a few months of each other. I still remember making a profound realization that, first, the lives of black girls could be something to write books about, and, second, that a person could spend their adulthood writing those stories. That I could spend my life this way. That same year, I also had a young, cool, queer English teacher, Amy Kissel, who encouraged a daily writing practice. So I really got to work on my writing, to get regular feedback from someone I trusted and admired, and truly work toward achieving my vision on the page.
In terms of BIG GIRL [her new novel released this month], I finished the first (very, very rough) draft as was my M.A. thesis in Creative Writing many years ago. Right after graduating, I began a PhD in English literature. I worked on the novel as much as I could while doing the PhD but it turned out that short stories were a bit more manageable between exams, coursework, and writing my dissertation. I ended up publishing a collection of stories, and a book of literary theory based on my dissertation research. So BIG GIRL is actually my third book, but it’s the book I’ve been writing since childhood.
What do you feel is the most difficult part of the writing process, and how do you tackle it?
I don’t love revision. I admire writers that think of revision as fun and exciting. I’m not that way. Sometimes I find it painful, because I tend to begin my fiction with a voice, and I find it very hard to tweak and curtail the voices of my narrators. But of course revision can be really gratifying, especially when you cut a line or section you feel especially close to, and then you revisit that piece and see how much better it is. I don’t believe that less is always more, but when it is, the language gleams. And I feel very excited and gratified in those moments.
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