Last week I picked up a book that had been on my shelf a long time about nineteenth century women authors, novelists I love to read. As the writers try to describe how these women coped with a predominantly male occupation, they begin with descriptions of how men of the era understood authorship. Some authors spoke of begetting their work onto the page, creating a world as God did, and owning the work, the scenes, the characters. The book's writers conclude that these authors, as owners of the work, feel that they have bound in black and white, in cloth or leather the story, the people and the events. (Mad Woman in the Attic by Sandra M Gilbert and Susan Gubar, p7).

The writers spend the rest of the book showing how nineteenth century women struggled with and against this image of the writer. What sparked my thinking was the idea that when the author is done writing, the creation is bound, static, complete.

I think of writing as much more interactive, an event that includes the reader (as some more current scholarship does).

Perhaps this is my sense because my most practiced writing work is the sermon, always a performed work. I do write the sermon out in advance. In order to make sure that I have thought through the idea I am presenting and work out the entry to the topic and the examples carefully enough, I have to write it all out. But always, it is an oral work. And as I speak, I sometimes see on the faces that are listening that a paragraph isn't making sense and elaborate further.

The written sermon is also not complete in and of itself. Its purpose is to engage a group of people. Sometimes it is sharing information that they can take away. Sometimes people are challenged to change. Sometimes the listener is offered comfort. Always, the intention of the written piece is to offer something to the listener. The written sermon is not complete until it is heard.

And often, when people talk about the sermon, the thing they take away from it is different from what I thought I offered. They only heard one small piece. They focussed on one example. They got upset about the whole thing. The sermon lives in the interaction between what I wrote and each person who engaged with my words.

This column is the same. It is a written piece, but it is written to be read. It is offered to prompt people to think about their connections to other people and the world, the way we live with each other and creation. It is meant to encourage reflection on meaning and purpose. The first action is mine, thinking and writing an image or a question. But it is not complete until it is offered to be read. The words live in the interaction between what gets put up on the Hub and the people who read the words and think about them.

What about the novels, poems, and stories that I write? Are they my creation, owned and bound by me?

Back in the summer, I went back to a story I wrote a couple years ago and thought, "I should do something with this." I sent it out for publication in a couple magazines. No takers as yet. But when I was invited to read at a fundraiser for the Owen Sound women's shelter, I realized this story was a perfect fit. I have now "done something" with this story: it has been read aloud to a group of people, offered for their pondering. Publication in print is not the only way to bring the words to light.

When does a novel come to life? Do the characters live when I write them, binding them in black and white on paper? Or do the books live when a reader opens the book and lets the words stimulate their imagination and thinking?

I think that while an author creates a work, it lives, not in the binding of ink on paper, but in the act of reading or listening. Each reader takes something different from the work. Each reading of a book or poem may stimulate the imagination and thinking differently. Writing is a co-operative event.

Cathy Hird lives among the trees and birds on the shore of Georgian Bay.