We all possess a belief system. Some of it is above the surface – conscious. Much of it is below the surface – subconscious. And belief systems do not like to be touched! Even if we really want to be open-minded, any statement that goes against our beliefs just feels wrong. Our egos will huff and say, “Because it is wrong!” Keep in mind that egos, by design, keep us small and scared. Always listen to your heart, but question your ego.
That said, for those egos who are listening, I’m actually not asking you to believe anything I say. What I am asking is that you suspend your disbelief. And that’s quite a different matter.
I’ve always asked this of my readers, because I’ve always written fantastical fiction. Time travels, shape-shifters, immortals. If you’re going to enjoy a fantasy, you have to be willing to suspend your disbelief, which basically just means ignoring the voice in your head that’s calling bullshit. “That can’t happen!” Okay. Who cares? It’s entertaining, and sometimes it’s fun to believe it can.
And then, if you find that’s going pretty well, or was never a problem to begin with, I ask you to take another, bigger step, and shake it all loose.
What do I mean by that?
I first started using this term when I was writing novels. More times than I care to count, I’d start writing a book, after spending several months doing plotting and character development work, only to realize that something wasn’t right. The characters weren’t coming to life for me. The story was lacking that magical spark that lights me up when I start writing, and makes me care. Nine times out of ten, I had the wrong heroine for the story. She worked on paper. As a couple, they should have been great. But they weren’t.
There was only one way to get to the bottom of it. I had to step way back out of the story and free every single element. Be willing to throw anything out.
I had to shake it all loose.
Believe me, I didn’t want to. I’d already done months of work on these characters, on the plotting of this story. So I’d fight this, trying to convince myself that a few tweaks should fix the problem. Maybe I’d change the heroine’s personality, or her backstory and what triggered her. But that never worked.
If I insisted on clinging to what I already had, what I already ‘knew’, I could never get to the truth. I never found the true heart of the story. I had to be willing to let go of everything and then test each element separately, feeling into it, feeling for the rightness of it.
More times than not, I’d wind up having to fire my heroine and interview new ones, because everything was interconnected. I could change her profession or her backstory, but that rarely changed her at her deepest core. Not enough for her to work in a story in which she ultimately didn’t belong.
Beliefs are sticky. Not only do they stick to us, but they stick to one another. The only way to be truly open is to shake them all loose.
So I’m asking you to consider pretending, when you read the stories here, that you’re new to this world, maybe to this universe. Perhaps, in this pretend persona, you don’t know what’s true and what’s not, but you’re willing to listen to anything, consider anything. Or at least feel into it, and then perhaps let it float away, knowing that if it resonates as truth with your soul, it’ll come back again when you’re a little more ready for it.
I’ve had to do this from the beginning. A man I highly respect wrote a book in which he admitted to seeing fairies. I wanted to laugh. But he was dead serious. My ego was having none of it. But my ego wasn’t strong, even back then. “Shush,” I told it. “We don’t have to believe him. But we’re not going to simply disbelieve him, either. We don’t know everything. No one does. And we’re not going to learn anything new if we’re not willing to be open to new things. Let’s just suspend our disbelief and see where it goes.”
So I tucked that away in the TBD file in my brain. To Be Determined…later…if I’m going to believe it or not. That file has never gotten very big, even though I used to put things in there all the time, because my capacity to believe has grown exponentially over the years and most of what I once tucked in there I’ve since decided was worthy of believing, at least in some context.
I hope you’ll do the same, and keep an open mind, or at least choose to suspend your disbelief. For now. And then feel for the truth in your heart. Because the heart always knows.