It helps to love the sound, feel and weight of words

By Richard Wagamese

I love dictionaries.

I think I always have or at least I have ever since I fell in love with words. I don’t read them cover to cover anymore. I used to but I started to notice how much of an elephantine pedant I was becoming and gave it up so I could keep friends.

But I love having a dictionary around. There’s one on my desk in close reach. Sometimes it’s comforting to know that when I’m busy pouring words onto paper that the right word and the right spelling are right there where I need them.

When you’re a writer, words are your bread and butter. It really helps to have a facility with them and an earnest desire to keep on learning more and more of them. I used to carry a notebook around in my back pocket so I could scribble words down and look them up later

Now I get e-mails from an online dictionary. They send me a new word for every day. I find that it serves a very utilitarian function during my work day – plus it comes in handy too. They have an audio player so you can learn correct pronunciations.

I remember hearing a story about an aspiring artist. She went up to a great painter and asked, “What does it take to be a great painter?” The artist thought a moment and said, “You have to love the smell of paint.”

Someone asked me one time, “What advice do you give Native people who want to be writers?” My first reply was, “Never listen to advice.” But I changed it to, “Grow to love the feel of words on your tongue.”

When you’re a writer you have to love the sound and feel and weight of words. Actually, if you’re going to do anything in this life, that’s pretty darn good advice. When you can communicate clearly and directly, you just naturally do everything better.

Native people ask me, “Why is it so important to learn English words?” I tell them because it’s not just our own people we have to communicate with. We need to share our stories with everyone if we’re going to build a better country and a better world. There’s a dictionary word for that – it’s “spiritual”.

Last time I looked that was a native word too.