Writing advice I would tattoo on my body

“Create an obsessive space.” - Yuri Herrera

My mom, Louise Halsey, on the banks of the Little Mulberry River, holds the book Very Far Away that Maurice Sendak dedicated to her when she was eight. Photo by Liz Sanders.

The past few years - hell, the past few days - have been an inside-out, upside-down time that sometimes feels like riding a wave, falling and being swept under so deep that I’m no longer sure how to reach the surface. Despite these challenges, the relationships that have come out of my writing have given me a sense of purpose. I sometimes marvel that my writing has saved me. Over the past few years, a few creative conversations have stayed with me. If I were going to cover my body in tattoos, some of these words of advice would make the cut:

“Creativity is born in the boring spaces in between.” - Paul Hempton, my dear friend from Berea College, on a road trip to Asheville, NC in 2021

“Be a luminous poetic eye” - Luis Garvan, Mexico City portrait photographer

“It wasn’t meant to be - it was for the slideshow of the mind.” John Stanemeyer, National Geographic photographer, commenting on something I wanted to photograph but missed, advice given on the US-Mexico border in 2018

“Have an untidy resolution” - Jess Bruder, author of Nomadland, during a talk she gave at the Logan Nonfiction Program in 2022

"What scenes do you have? Think of it in cinematic terms." - Mark Bowden, the author of Blackhawk Down, a mentor at the Logan Nonfiction Program in 2022

“Take portraits of every person you interview.” - Deborah Solomon, author of American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell, in NYC in 2021

“The translation is much better than the original.” - Elena Poniatowska, over coffee at her house in Mexico City in 2019

“Remaining true to your art is an immense psychic task, one only made harder by paying attention to critical opinions of your work. So, I live a very quiet and private life with my husband, trying to experience each day deeply. A vital part of spiritual practice is to remember daily what matters and what doesn’t. Though outside opinion can and will elicit an emotional response, it doesn’t actually matter in any fundamental way. You do your work for years when it garners no attention, and you continue to do it once it does. No difference.” CE Morgan, who attended Berea College with me, and whose interview I return to regularly

I’ll close with the memory of a letter that Maurice Sendak, the author of Where the Wild Things Are, wrote to my mom in 1966. He wrote that he couldn’t put up with “it” anymore - and then clarified that “it” was himself. I can relate to the feeling! I find that when I’m tired of myself, it is best to immerse myself in the creative work of others.

To the creative forces that save us,

Alice