Writer Drew Hayden Taylor.Sara Cornthwaite/Supplied
I have spent a good 3 1/2 decades hunched over a pad of paper/typewriter/computer making things up for a living. Some might call me a writer. Others a dreamer. Still others an Anti-Cthulhu/Shiva … or a creator of worlds. Me, I think of myself as a storyteller. I tap a few keys on my keyboard and anything can happen.
It’s something fun. It’s interesting. It pays for cat food. It beats working in a cubicle. That wasn’t always my path. I woke up one day and was asked to write a TV script. Another time, out of nowhere, I was asked to write a play. Same with a novel, and later documentaries. I’m afraid one day soon I’ll wake up and be asked to write some important religious text – ‘Thou shall not covet thy neighbours land’.
In all those years, perhaps the most interesting thing I’ve learned is how serious so many people in the industry take what we do. To some, it’s already almost a religion, with a set of existing rules and guidelines that must be followed if you are to be taken seriously. This could be perhaps why so many of my friends tell me I was lucky to not have been formally trained in a higher educational institution. Instead, I learned what I learned on the rough and tough streets. That’s where I saw the Brechtian and Aristotelians knife fight in alleyways. Bar brawls between free-verse poets and the limerick artists taught me so much.
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Still, many think I should take my profession more seriously. Not that long ago, I wrote a collection of Native-themed science fiction short stories, titled Take Us to Your Chief and Other Stories. What’s interesting here is my publisher obtained a painting by Kwakwa̱ka̱'wakw/K’omoks artist Andy Everson, of an Indigenously drawn toy robot. We all thought it was perfect for the cover. But as the days went by, I became obsessed with the fact none of my stories featured a West Coast-designed toy robot. So, to avoid misrepresentation, I endeavoured to write one. Two days of working it out, and three days of writing it and I sent it off. My publisher loved it.
At the time I was the writer-in-residence at Wilfrid Laurier University and I told this experience to one of the instructors. She found it interesting and asked permission to share it with her students. I asked why. “They’re first-year creative writing students. At this point they don’t believe they should be forced to write anything unless the Muses whisper in their ears or they are properly inspired.”
I told her to tell them “As a writer, the best motivation is a mortgage.” Unfortunately, it wasn’t the first time I’ve had to disillusion future writers.
One time, a young director of one of my plays, perhaps seeking a window into the Indigenous spirit of creation, asked me with an intense look on her face, emphasizing every single word, “Why did you write this play?”
“To get paid,” I answered nonchalantly. For most of my adult life, I’ve had a horrible, insatiable, vicious creature haunting me constantly. No, not the Wendigo. A landlord. The director looked at me, stunned for a moment, then she ran off, mumbling angrily something about “ … then why are we all here?” As I said, writing is fun but it’s also a profession.
The general manager of a theatre company in California once asked me the same question and I gave the same answer. She refused to believe me. “There’s got to be a reason you wrote this play, at this particular time.” Maybe. The stories come to me and I write them down. I don’t question origin. I embrace results.
I was doing a Zoom session with a university class in Germany. They wanted to know how I started and I mentioned that a thousand years ago the artistic director of an Indigenous theatre company on Manitoulin Island asked me to write a play for him. I was reluctant as I had never done that before. To entice me, he made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Properly motivated, I did as requested.
One bohemian student far across the Atlantic raised his electronic hand, and looking quite surprised, said “So, you are a capitalist.” I guess in Germany, people who write plays aren’t paid. My mother spent several decades cooking and cleaning for people and, to the best of my knowledge, she expected to get paid. I guess she was a capitalist, too.
The thing about writing that I enjoy so much is the simple fact that you, the writer, have so much more control over the world you create than the world you live in. Who wouldn’t like that? I’m just amused when others romanticize the industry. Sitting in a room for hours on end, staring at a blank screen loses its idealization quickly.
I have a cousin who’s a plumber. I don’t think he waits for the Muses to install a toilet.
Essentially, I write because I write. I lay out my traps and occasionally one catches a story.
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