I also attended some fantastically good presentations. My favorites were from Sandra Tayler, Clint Johnson, Tristi Pinkston, and Tracy and Laura Hickman. What great classes!

But of all the things I experienced this last weekend, one thing stands out the most: I learned something about myself that I don’t like.

Sometimes I have pre-judged people. And I am not going to give any names, but there was a person, a fellow author, who I knew (by name, by sight) from previous conferences, that I never bothered to get to know because I figured they wrote books that I wouldn’t care for. And they seemed a little bit strange anyway. And I thought their fans were strange too.

My realization: I am a foolish man, languishing in a thoughtless stupor.

Yeah. I called myself an idiot. Not because of what I did, but because of what I did NOT do. I should have introduced myself to them a LONG time ago. I should have gotten to know them.

You know what? I discovered that not only are they very articulate, but they are a lot more like me than I ever would have dreamed. And I also discovered that I really like them. I have become part of their fan club.

That is not the first time I have almost packed C-4 explosives around a door of opportunity and blown it sky-high. I think back on those types of experiences in my past, and wonder: What would have happened if I had not given up my preconceived prejudices about them?

Uh . . . My life would be very different now. Some of my best friends today are people who I basically ignored when we first met, years ago.

How about you? Have you ever met someone and not liked them at first, and then later, really gotten to know them? And then become close friends? And then had the horrible realization that you ALMOST passed up a wonderful opportunity? Didn’t it make you sick to your stomach to even think about it?

Yeah. I thought you would understand.

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/04/c-s-lewis-on-writing.html

One of my favorite quotes in the letter: “Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn’t mean anything else.”

Yeah. That’s certainly a great idea. But my editors frequently prove to me just how hard that really is. For me, at least. But I’m sure none of the rest of you have that problem.

My thanks to @jmaxwilson for pointing me to that great post.

One of the questions that I have had concerns the use of dialog, and whether or not dialog does a good enough job at showing, or if it can slip into telling the reader what to think and feel. And editor by the name of Victoria Mixon answered my unspoken question today, and said it like this:

“Dialog is part of showing. “Showing” is where the author shows the characters as they act and speak and move in their described environment—and keeps their own big trap shut.”

Yeah. That is what I thought. But not everybody thinks dialog is “showing”. Read the rest of her post here and find out why she was banging her head on her desk. Thanks, Victoria!

She’s holding an online book launch on her blog all day on Saturday, March 24^th, and you are invited!  Every two hours from 10 a.m. to midnight, Tristi will be holding mini-contests, answering trivia questions, and giving away great prizes.

Head on over to http://www.tristipinkston.blogspot.com to enter and to have a great time!

So what am I to do?

I declare today to be National Be A Food Critic Day.  Here we go . . .

El Paisa Grill in West Valley City has tacos that will “knock your socks off”. That would be “caigan los calcetines”, in Spanish.

Now, I don’t know what that really means if you translate it directly like I did with Google. It may not even be nice. In English, the phrase “holy cow” doesn’t really work in French. Say “sacré vache” while in France, and they look at you like you just escaped the psychiatric lock-down unit. And I’m sure my Spanish speaking friends probably did an eye roll like my teenage daughters do with any of my attempts at being funny. Sorry about that.

*cough*

At any rate, El Paisa Grill has great tacos. Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. they have an All-You-Can-Eat taco bar for just $8.99.  I talked to the manager and asked permission to take some pictures. At first, he looked at me like I was from the health department. But I told him that the Chorizo on the taco bar was excellent. He told me they make their own, in store. That must be why it wasn’t greasy like so many others I have had at other restaurants.

The good: They have fantastic salsa and chips. Their fresh corn tortillas, cilantro, and fresh limes made the tacos sing. They had nine different choices for filling, and everything else you usually put on a taco. They serve the fillings, asking you what you want on it, then allow you to do the condiments. I like that. And to top it all off, the price was perfect.

The bad: I ate WAY too much.

Here is the address so that you can go and eat way too much:

El Paisa Grill
2126 South 3200 West
West Valley City, UT 84104
801-973-6660

Go get some tacos. Tell ‘em I sent you. Maybe I’ll see you there.

The crossing-point I refer to is the separation of good and evil. It used to be easy to see the dividing line between the two. Everything appears so gray now.

The wheels of our wagon train are now mired on a muddy trail, and torrential rain is coming down in blinding sheets. We are prevented, it seems, from seeing not only where we came from, but where we are going. This trail is not the one we intended to be on. Somewhere down the line, we took a detour in the dark. Supplies are running low, and now we are in enemy territory.

Will America cease to be the great nation it once was? It already has. As a whole, Americans are no longer the moral people who once held up the torch of liberty to the world. Americans have become ungrateful, unrepentant, disobedient, and full of hate. And I am not talking about hatred toward our fellowman. I am talking about hatred toward God. Ungrateful for His blessings. Unrepentant in our hearts. Disobedient to His commandments.

You don’t believe me? Do you think Americans have forgotten what the Ten Commandments are? How about you? Can you name them from memory? In order?

I can do it.

1. No other gods.
2. No idol worship.
3. Do not take His name in vain.
4. Keep the Sabbath holy.
5. Honor Father and Mother.
6. Do not kill.
7. Do not commit adultery.
8. Do not steal.
9. Do not bear false witness.
10. Do not covet.

If you couldn’t name them yourself, don’t feel bad. Most people can’t. I blame our schools.

Actually, I am kidding about that one. I don’t blame our schools. I blame us. We kicked God out of the schools. We did it because we believed a lie. We believed the lie that the founders of this nation intended us to have freedom FROM religion. It’s not true. They intended us to have freedom OF religion. Big difference.

Will the Constitution be destroyed? No. I am assured that the good, God-fearing people of this country will uphold the Constitution even if Washington collapses on itself into a huge sink-hole.

But we have a lot of work to do. There is a pernicious evil in the world right now. Far, far worse than terrorists or Taliban. I believe the most evil idea in the world is this: People are saying that Satan doesn’t exist.

Yes. This trend, even in mainstream Christianity, that Satan, the Devil, doesn’t exist, is a huge problem. If they claim that he is a myth, they thereby also deny the existence of true evil in the world. And if there really isn’t evil, then there really isn’t good either. All is gray. You can then do whatever you wish, as long as you don’t harm anyone else. Does that sound familiar?

Can we even raise a warning voice against the establishment who has led us down this muddy trail? If we do, what then? Are we being too partisan? Or, is the public debate acceptable as long as we tolerate the other points of view and don’t personally accuse each other of having evil motives?

Here is my take on it. We need to be civil. We need to be kind and have compassion. We should treat others with respect. But, we should not be required to accept the words and ideas of others without scrutiny. I believe it is perfectly acceptable to exercise due diligence, study things out, and then decide for ourselves if we need to continue to listen to a voice. If we determine the voice is promoting evil, we tune it out.

There truly is evil in the world, working hard to destroy all that is good. Anyone who denies this is fooling themselves. Or . . . they are being fooled by him who says, “I am no devil, for there is none.”

What set me off on this tangent was that in recent days, on more than one occasion, I have heard the following idea presented: “Nobody is trying to destroy the Constitution.”

That is a LIE.

The Constitution was divinely inspired. Our founding fathers recognized that. If you don’t believe me, go read their writings. Look at the Federalist Papers. Look at the histories. The hand of God is plainly evident in the creation of that wonderful document.

If you ARE convinced that the Constitution was divinely inspired, and if you believe that Satan is real, then why don’t we put 2 and 2 together. Wouldn’t he want to destroy it? Wouldn’t he want to use the offices of the Presidency, Congress, the Senate, and the Judiciary to change the document until it is no longer recognizable, OR, cause them all to ignore the document and do as they please?

Yes. That is exactly what Satan is trying to do. The Constitution represents Liberty. And Satan does not want us to have Liberty, or the freedom to choose for ourselves.

Don’t get me wrong here. I am not talking about Democrats. I am not talking about Republicans. I personally think, as a whole, they are almost all corrupt, both parties. Libertarians and Independents too. Not every single person, but most of them, corrupt. Secular and Godless.

And now we finally get around to my point . . . if we can’t even agree that evil DOES exist in the world, and that there truly are those who would destroy all that is good (whether knowingly and intentionally, or unwittingly because they are an ignorant pawn), then how in the world can we ever protect the things we hold dear if we don’t even admit that there IS an enemy?

The solution to the problem: America needs to return to God. Then it will be far easier to see the enemy among us. Because, trust me . . . he does exist.

When I think of literary fiction, I think back on my school days when I was required to read Of Mice and Men, The Old Man and the Sea, Lord of the Flies, and To Kill a Mockingbird. Now, proving whether or not these examples all qualify as literary fiction is not my purpose here. Suffice it to say, these books all did something very peculiar to me when I read them. They all created in me a deep-felt empathy for the characters in the story. They moved me.

What is literary fiction? I like the definition given by Nathan Bransford: “In literary fiction the plot usually happens beneath the surface, in the minds and hearts of the characters. Things may happen on the surface, but what is really important are the thoughts, desires, and motivations of the characters as well as the underlying social and cultural threads that act upon them.”

Nathan also said: “…literary fiction is more challenging to read than genre fiction because it requires the reader to infer a great deal of the plot rather than simply sitting back and watching the plot unfold. It requires empathy to relate to characters.”

That is EXACTLY how I would define literary fiction.

SCORE: Wikipedia=Zero  Nathan Bransford=Infinity

Let’s get on with the review…

On Little Wings by Regina Sirois is a story about a young lady from Nebraska who discovers a family secret, and ends up in Maine on a very personal journey of discovery that changes not only her heart, but the hearts of everyone around her.

End of review.

Yeah. That is all you’re going to get. (Actually, that wasn’t a review. Just a simple one-line syllabus.)

You know what always irritated me about literary fiction in English class? It was the analysis of what the books. What do we learn? What was the author trying to tell us? What does it teach us about society?

I don’t have a problem with the questions. The questions should be asked. By the reader. My problem was that sometimes we are TOLD what the literary book is REALLY about. What the hidden meanings are. How society should react to the story. How we can fix our broken selves.

Not going to do that here, folks.

I’ll give it to you straight: I think the book is actually classified as YA, but in my mind, it’s Literary YA. No matter what category you put it in, this book is a jewel. The author made me feel the story . . . very deeply. I felt like I was in Maine. The prose is near perfect in the way it describes both character and setting. How I loved the characters! For you guys out there: yes, I admit, it’s a bit of a girly book. But trust me on this one, you really need to read this story, if nothing else to see how an author and poet can paint with words.

Yes, it’s that good. One of the best books I have ever read. Move over, Hemingway. This girl Regina just took your crown. THIS is literary fiction at its best.

Stop by and check it out!

Now having written a novel, several short stories, and being in the middle of two more novels, I have figured out that I am not really a pantser when it comes to writing. I don’t think I am a true outliner, either. For those of you who don’t know, a pantser just starts writing and sees where the story takes them. I did that with my first novel, up until the point that timelines and locations and descriptions all got too complicated. I had to start taking notes and planning ahead.

My biggest difficulty came with where to take the notes. A spreadsheet? Notes in each chapter that I would carry over and revise as I went along? A notebook? A book like “The Complete Novel Plotting Workbook” by Weston Elliott? Which is very good, by the way.

I have heard that some people use index cards on a wall, or lots of sticky-notes. Being able to re-order scenes is very appealing to me, but I have never tried it. It seemed too cumbersome. With less-than-readable handwriting, I would rather stick to electronic means. Still, I really would like to try the card method.

Scrivener has saved me. I don’t have to mess with paper. It allows me to reorder scenes as much as I want, mark scenes according to their progress (draft, second revision, final, etc), and keep everything in one place. And, since I save the files into my Dropbox account, I can access them anywhere. (Yes, I am doing backups locally should the Dropbox folks vanish from the face of the earth.) You get to do custom labels too, and organize your files and folders any way you wish.

One of the coolest features: Research. I can take a long URL to a specific picture or place on a website, drop it into a Scrivener note, and click on the link to bring up the page. Or copy the page entirely and paste it in as a document for off-line access. Or, let Scrivener do it for you: it accepts PDFs, images, and websites as media imports. I think it will even embed youtube clips. I’ll have to try that…

If you have never checked it out, I would suggest you take a look. Scrivener is made for Linux (what I run), Windows, and Mac-OS.