DREW HAYDEN TAYLOR

Drew Hayden Taylor is an award winning

playwright, novelist, columnist, and

television writer. Born on the Curve Lake

First Nation (Ojibway) in central Ontario,

he has spent the last 25 years spreading

the gospel of Native literature around the

world. The author of 23 books, Drew is

constantly in search of a good story.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Who was your inspiration growing up?

 

I was a single child of a single mother, and I drew inspiration

from my family around me. We were all living on the reserve

doing what we could to survive. My grandmother was the

oldest of 14. My mother was a single parent and a working

mother, and so I learned the value of a strong work ethic. I

would have to say my inspiration came from my grandmother

and my mother.

 

Were there any issues you dealt with as a young person

that you see young people dealing with today?

 

Oh, so much has changed. I grew up with a sense of isolation

up on a reserve in the middle of nowhere. I didn’t see a

television until I was six or seven. Black and white, and it

only got two channels that were kind of snowy. Kids are so

plugged in today to anything and everything. I think the world

is completely different than when I was growing up.

Some things have changed, but some things are still the

same. There’s still the whole sense of our culture being slowly

eroded by the dominant culture, by the introduction of the

mass media, and now Skype, Twitter, etcetera. What had

started with the introduction of radio, and television, and

the telephone whittling away at the language has now been

exacerbated by the rapid growth of the social network. That’s

still a very important issue to be dealt with.

 

What is the role of a leader?

 

To set an example and provide a direction for the community,

for the people. I’ve been the artistic director of a theater

company and part of being an artistic director, like being

a leader in the community, is being a personality—being

somebody who represents the voice of the people, the

direction of the community, and hopefully the wants, the

desires, and necessities of the community.

 

 

 

 

 

What advice would you give young authors?

 

The first one is to read as much as you can. In my opinion, all

good writers are good readers, and all great writers are great

readers. I managed to have written 23 books without going

to university or even taking a writing course. I voraciously

read anything I could get my fingers on. I like to think that

each one of those books was a brick in my foundation as an

author, unconsciously, subconsciously through osmosis, the

very act of reading taught me character development, block

art, all those things.

 

The other thing I tell them is if you want to be a great writer,

try to lead an interesting life. If you are going to spend all your

time in a basement playing video games, you’re not going

to have much to write about. So go out and do things. Have

adventures, travel, or volunteer. The more things you can put in

your life, the more stuff you can put on your resume in terms

of memories in your life. It will definitely help you as a writer

because you will have more to draw on as you’re pulling out

stories and it will give you better ideas and a better way of

approaching life. So I tell kids, swim to England, canoe back,

throw up in your parents’ car, get married, have your heart

broken, spend the night in jail, do all these different things. The

more things you do with your life, the more you explore, the

more you will have to rely on as a writer.

 

The third one is, there’s an old writer’s adage, “There is no

such thing as a good writer, just a good re-writer.” So don’t

be afraid to rewrite. I do a minimum of three drafts with

everything I work on, so it’s there and I know it’s getting done.

Last but not least: Never throw anything away! My first novel,

which was a Native vampire novel, was actually a play I had

written ten years earlier that didn’t go anywhere. Ten years

later I blew the dust off and put it on the shelf. My second

novel, which was nominated for a Governor General’s Award,

was a screenplay that never got produced. Both of these were

such good stories, but I had them in the wrong format. It

didn’t work, so I guess I had to write them in the format that

they were intended to be.

 

If you had one message to send to the Aboriginal

community, what would it be?

 

Don’t be afraid of the future because you never know what

it will bring. Oh, that sounds so clich.. I don’t know if I have

a message. There’s so many messages that need to be heard

and explored and dealt with. I don’t have one message. Each

individual Nation has their own problems, and their own

needs that have to be addressed. Did you know at the point

of contact in 1497 in Newfoundland there were over 50

different languages in Canada? So there is no one message I

could send because they all have different requirements. I am

not worldly enough to address the needs and requirements,

and the knowledge of all Nations of Canada.