National Undergraduate Literature Conference

You see that post title?  It's true, and it's prestigious, and it's cool.  I submitted a short story and it was accepted to be presented at the National Undergraduate Literature Conference (they call it NULC, pronounced like the sound you make when you swallow loudly, except with an "n" in front).  So about a week ago, I went, along with three other people from my college (one of whom is already graduated).

The interesting mix you get at a literature conference: people who can write but don't necessarily like it, people who love to analyze/critique literature/poetry, and people who love to write literature/poetry.  I fit in the third category.  My companions, the people from my university, fit in the second category.  This means I would go sit in a room without them and listen to people read stories while they preferred sitting in a room listening to people analyze ... well, I listened to a few essays, and they seemed to analyze society through the lens of fiction.  It made me feel a little juvenile in comparison, listening to stories instead of the hard-hitting academic stuff, but you know what?  Stories 1) are more enjoyable, 2) make time go by faster, and 3) are more memorable.  I can write an essay.  I even enjoy writing essays.  I prefer writing and listening to stories or poems.  Plus, if I'm going to be a writer, stories and poems are going to help me a lot more than critical essays.

The story I submitted is called God Doesn't Visit Hell.  I wrote it last year and had planned to edit it more after stepping away from it for a while, but the deadline for this conference came up and it was the thing I submitted.  Honestly, I didn't know about the conference until my friend told me to apply.  I guess I just wasn't paying attention.  My last-minute edits added up to me making sure it fit the page requirement of 15 pages or less, which meant I had to cut about 300 words.  No big deal, right?

My story was accepted, and then I realized I would need to be able to read the story in 15 minutes and was allowed to shorten it for that time limit.  I timed myself reading it and figured out I could read about 3,500 words in that amount of time.  The version I'd submitted was 6,221 words long.

So I butchered it.  That's how it felt, anyway.  I took out details that helped the story be more real, details that weren't necessary to the story line but weren't fluff, either.  It was not fun.  The version of the story I read at the conference was 3,559 words.  That's, what, half of the original?

I was scheduled to read during the first session of the conference.  While few people showed up (it was the morning), the ones who were there seemed impressed with the story, which was a huge relief.  I was scared I had destroyed it.  Turns out it was still pretty good.  One lady even raised her hand and asked me if I have kids (I don't), because I did such a good job, she said, of portraying a mother's perspective.

The other thing I wanted to talk about was the Open Mic event, which I thought was a blast.  Okay, it was a nerdy, literature-y blast.  Everyone came with poetry or pieces of short (flash) fiction to read.  It was great because of the diversity and, well, I just loved the atmosphere.  I read one poem of mine, Spears of Grass, and then realized that there was more time than people.  A lot of people were presenting more than once, so I borrowed my friend's laptop and read another poem and a stand-alone paragraph of prose (The Yellow Songbird, I posted it a while back).  Some fun stuff I heard while there: a short story about the guy who mows the lawns during/after a zombie apocalypse, a poem about the beginning of the world which combined Biblical and Greek mythology, a shoutout on behalf of nerds in a hipster world, a come-at-me-bro speech about what it's like to be "F-A-T fat," and a whole lot more.  For me, it was the highlight of the conference.  There were a lot of talented people there.  Some are ready to be published, in my point of view, and others are not (I think mine was in this category), but we're all students and we're all still learning.

That is something I love about writing, by the way: Everyone is still learning.  No matter how skilled a person gets to be, they can still improve.  It's incredible.

If anyone out there is wondering about whether or not to attend this conference, I have this to say: It's fun, it's a learning experience, and if you really want to be a writer you should go if at all possible.

Someone please remind me to go next year, but to be better-prepared this time.