Christine McIntee

“If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavourable.” -C.S. Lewis

After months of tucking flyers away neatly in my bag and marking all the advertised dates on my calendar, I finally convinced myself to show up to a writing group at my local bookstore. Village Books hosts a variety of intriguing writing groups, including poetry, memoir, and speculative fiction. Still, I decided to attend the “Prompts” group as a first timer because its description seemed less intimidating than the others: “Writing includes all forms and genres of writing. Let your imagination go wild.”

Before I arrived, the hour-and-a-half scheduled duration seemed very long; after I arrived, it seemed very short. I read my writing out loud for the first time, and I listened to others’ stories. I learned that listening to stories spoken aloud is an art form in itself, a skill that requires practice. I’m used to having the words on the page in front of me, always there to reread and digest at my own leisure. I found it challenging to visualize the meaning of the words, as I was visualizing them floating in the air when spoken, disembodied from the rest of the words that would reveal the narrative.

The difficulty I experienced fascinated me. Why didn’t I have any trouble actively listening and understanding when we were conversing with each other? But as soon as someone brought their eyes down to their paper to read, it was like entering another world, like falling asleep at the beginning of a movie, only to wake up in the middle with no way to rewind and no subtitles to help either. Perhaps that was the challenge: our stories really were their own worlds. I jumped around to different planets as each of us read, getting jet lag and culture shock.

This experience led me to think of how Socrates compared dialogue to text in Plato’s Phaedrus:

SOCRATES: I cannot help feeling, Phaedrus, that writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence. And the same may be said of speeches. You would imagine that they had intelligence, but if you want to know anything and put a question to one of them, the speaker always gives one unvarying answer. And when they have been once written down they are tumbled about anywhere among those who may or may not understand them, and know not to whom they should reply, to whom not: and, if they are maltreated or abused, they have no parent to protect them; and they cannot protect or defend themselves.
PHAEDRUS: That again is most true.
SOCRATES: Is there not another kind of word or speech far better than this, and having far greater power—a son of the same family, but lawfully begotten?
PHAEDRUS: Whom do you mean, and what is his origin?
SOCRATES: I mean an intelligent word graven in the soul of the learner, which can defend itself, and knows when to speak and when to be silent.
PHAEDRUS: You mean the living word of knowledge which has a soul, and of which the written word is properly no more than an image?
SOCRATES: Yes, of course that is what I mean.

There is much more to explore regarding the relationship between orature and literature, as well as memorization and libraries. But I will conclude with an unedited sample of what I wrote during the group. The prompt was to turn around and glance one last time.

The city was sinking and she was the only one who knew its fate. The only one who knew that all that was left to do was walk away. She wanted to look back, to capture one last image of the city that raised her, to have just one more memory. Even if that image would be poison, seeping into her consciousness for the rest of her life, haunting happier times. Why did she want to look at what she knew she needed to leave behind? Its power over her was something she had fought so hard to break…