Cherie Dimaline's best writing advice? Don't throw anything out
CBC Books | CBC News | Posted: February 15, 2018 6:36 PM | Last Updated: November 5, 2019
Cherie Dimaline's The Marrow Thieves was defended by Jully Black on Canada Reads 2018. The YA novel follows a group of Indigenous people from different backgrounds on the run as they are hunted for their marrow, which holds the ability to dream.
"Don't throw any of your writing away. This is something Lee Maracle said to me. I was working on my novel, The Girl Who Grew a Galaxy, and she was looking at it with me and said, 'Okay, this needs to come out' and I agreed. She said, 'When you take those pieces out, save them in a file on your computer. Don't throw them out because I guarantee you there's a reason you wrote them and they will come back out.' I have a collection of short stories called A Gentle Habit that came out after that based entirely on those tangents that were pulled out of The Girl Who Grew a Galaxy."
Cherie Dimaline's comments have been edited and condensed.