Cherie Dimaline's best writing advice? Don't throw anything out

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. 

​CBC Books asked Dimaline for her best writing tip.

"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.