What writers do

 On March 7, I was thinking about writers who can say what they’re doing.

A writer could say: “I’m trying to write a novel.”

Instead, N. Scott Momaday said: “I regard what I’m doing as an inquiry into the nature of mythmaking.”

Other writers try to do other things.

Momaday’s quote came from a collection of interviews of Southwestern writers. From the same source come these comments from other writers about they were trying to do:

• Edward Abbey, who wrote Desert Solitaire: “Writing is a form of piety or worship. I try to write prose psalms that praise the divine beauty of the natural world.”

• Rudolfo Anana, who wrote Bless Me, Ultima, said his novels “basically have to do with a search for meaning or an archetypal journey ...”

• John Nichols, who wrote The Milagro Beanfield War, quoted Nelson Algren: “I submit that literature is made upon any occasion that a challenge is put to the ruling apparatus by a conscience in touch with humanity.”  

• Denise Chávez, who wrote The Last of the Menu Girls: “I think I try to demystify happiness …“

That’s a sample. All of those authors wrote other things and might have been trying to do something different with different works. 

Incidentally, interviews with writers are interesting in that way. An interview is a snapshot. It captures one instant in a changing situation.

• Source: This Is About Vision: Interviews with Southwestern Writers, edited by John F. Crawford, William Balassi and Annie O. Eysturoy; Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1990. And, again, thanks, Alvin.