Earn Every Word

Hello, everyone. Edanat’e! Good day to you all. It’s Richard Van Camp: your favorite Tlicho cousin from Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, Canada, who lives in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada—Treaty 6 Country.

I wanted to thank you so very much for selecting me to be the judge for the TCJ Student writing contest. To read the writings that were submitted for the fiction, nonfiction, and poetry sections filled my love cup.

To read about the writers’ lives, their homes, their grandparents, their cultural teachings, their traditions, their visions for the future was completely inspiring to me for my own work. Mahsi cho. Thank you all to everyone who shared their writing. In my mind, you are all storymakers. I salute you. I stand in awe of you.

Myself, how I came to be a writer is very simple: I’ve always loved to read, gossip, and share stories. I love listening to a great storyteller and I read all the time (books, magazines, comics, graphic novels—you name it!), and I am still starving after all these years to be welcomed into Indigenous homes and communities. I want to know what they know. I want to listen in on suppertime conversations. I want to eavesdrop on conversations with rowdy cousins and I want to know what the constellations are like where you live. What do you dream about? What is your wish? Who are you afraid of? What’s the one new thing you’re saving up for? Who do you have a crush on? Come on. You can tell me. I won’t tell anyone ;).

As much as I loved Judy Blume, S.E. Hinton, and Stephen King and Pat Conroy and Mike Grell’s The Warlord comic and The Savage Sword of Conan magazine—as much as I loved reading those soul-inspiring works, it hit me that no one was telling our stories in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, my hometown. And I decided at 19 to tell my truth and not hold back. It took me five years, but I wrote my first novel, The Lesser Blessed, which is now a movie with First Generation Films, and looking back 25 years after its release, I would not change a word. I earned every single word in that novel, and I think that’s why it’s still touching hearts even all these precious years after its publication.

So that’s my advice to you, as writers—earn every word. Tell your truth. Don’t hold back. Also, the story is the boss. Listen to what the story wants and deserves to be. We are all disciples to the craft of writing. We will always be students.

Look at me now: 30 books in 30 years, and I’m still in awe of the blank page and the first word and where it can take us. Sometimes I know the ending before I begin. Sometimes it’s a phrase that I need to put into dialogue or sometimes it’s the title that launches and orbits me.

You can talk yourself out of writing anything, so my advice is to get it down. Get it all down. That’s the first draft. That’s the wet clay. You can sculpt from there, but get it down.

A story also takes as long as it takes. And never be afraid to ask for help. Do research, start a writing group, wear an article of clothing that your character would wear. Have fun. You are not going to break anything.

My mentor, the late and great Lee Maracle, once said that writing is the best therapy. Through writing, she told us, you can find what has been stolen from you. You can mend what has been broken. You can resurrect the dead through your writing.

She was right.

If you’re wondering who I am, you can check out my SoundCloud channel, my YouTube channel, my Facebook, X, and Instagram accounts, and my website: www.richardvancamp.com. I invite you to come visit and listen and watch and read—and please read other Indigenous writers. We are starving to see ourselves in books, comics, video games, movies, and TV shows, hey, cousin?

So, let’s fill all those mediums and show the world just how beautiful we are, because we are. You showed me how beautiful all of you are through your writing. Mahsi cho. I am so grateful to you, and I wish you and your families and your work the very best.

Happy writing. Happy watching. Happy sensing. Happy listening. Happy daydreaming. Happy eavesdropping. Happy goosenecking. Happy questioning. Remember: the two most important words we have as writers, and maybe as humans, are “What if?”

🙂

Don’t be afraid, cousins, to shine. So many aunties and uncles have already broken trail for you to make your journey easier. See you on the trail!

🙂

Mahsi cho.

Richard Van Camp (Dene) is a graduate of the En’owkin Centre and the author of more than two dozen books, including the internationally acclaimed The Lesser Blessed.