What breaks the enchantment?

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

davem, I have to smile sometimes how you communicate with the rest of us on this and other threads, as if you have found the Gospel According to Tolkien and are trying with all your might to communicate the evangelium, trying to get us all to believe. On this thread you have presented a powerful principle, that belief is necessary before its object can be accepted. That has nothing to do with whether it was experienced

Interesting that you cast the discussion this way. And interesting that you smile at davem's zealous proselytising. I can't smile at it because it too much insists that there is only one way to read, one way to enjoy, one way to find that Other Land just over the next page whose scent you just might carry back with you to the waking world. Such fundamentalism I find limiting and even somewhat scary, however eloquently or kindly or sincerely meant. Or however truely or meaningfully experienced by one reader.

But even more interesting, littlemanpoet, is your contrast here between "accepted" and "experienced." That's a nice way of handling the differences on this thread, I think.

So, how or what will you take back to your writing? That you can provide the experience for the reader, but not necessarily the belief?