National Undergraduate Literature Conference - Again!

I had the marvelous opportunity to present another short story at the National Undergraduate Literature Conference this year. The story I took was The Descartes Project, a science fiction story that stars a man who has no skin or bones and who lives in a government-funded tank system. (Note that following this link takes you to a snippet of the story that is not exactly the same as what I submitted. I've done some editing since then.)

But on to how the conference went so you can get an idea of just what this conference is. It's held at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah every year, and undergraduate students from across the U.S. submit their literary work, which includes essays and poetry as well as short stories, in hopes of being invited to present it.

Ron Carlson

It opens with a banquet. This year, Ron Carlson (a respected author) was the featured speaker during the banquet, and he was a brilliant speaker, one of those presenters where you don’t realize it’s actually been an hour when he’s done. I thought he was ending early. He talked about … geez, it was brilliant and I’m having a hard time remembering it. I think the delivery, more than the content, was what was great. The content boiled down to not quitting for the day when you first want to (while writing). “The writer is the person who stays in the room.” That’s what he says in his book Ron Carlson Writes a Story, too.

Bret Anthony Johnston

Lisa Lenard-Cook

The conference started in earnest the next morning. It is set up in sessions, and each session is filled with various options as to which student presenters to listen to, with 2-4 student presenters per room you could go to. That day ended with an Open Mic poetry event, where people performed original (mostly) poems. I mean, they could perform poems written by other people, but I don’t think anyone did. I hadn't brought my poetry with me to perform, because the group of students I was with kind of stumbled onto the location on accident while exploring the area. The majority of these poems were performed in spoken-word format, though they were usually read instead of performed from memory. The main thing I came away with was that none of the poets were actually saying anything with their poems. They would say things that were completely acceptable, popular things for people to be saying, and everyone would cheer for them once it was over. I would have enjoyed seeing someone get up there and say something more controversial, less popular, and to have seen what the audience did in response. That may be the Opinion editor in me, but it's weird for someone to pretend they're speaking up against the man when they really aren't saying anything he hasn't heard before from a million other people. It just goes to show that most people either don't have original opinions or else are too scared to actually voice what they really think without some sort of validation before, during, and after.

An example of deus ex machina

Two interesting things from that first day, from essays I listened to: Someone wrote something about deus ex machina, which is when the hero is saved by a miraculous turn of events. The student was making the argument that it’s out of style because we live in an atheistic society (her claim, not mine), and people should abandon it because it just isn't realistic. My problem: She didn't once give support for her claim that we live in an atheistic society or for her claim that people hate it when deus ex machina happens in literature. I wanted to call her out on it, but couldn't do so in good conscience. I feel like people used to use it more because everyone gets into trouble we wish we could be saved from, from which we cannot save ourselves. It’s a recognition of the role of God (one of His roles, anyway) in our lives. Usually, though, God works in less out-of-the-blue ways, so the random saving does seem less realistic to us, modernly.

The other interesting thing was the essay someone wrote about fanfiction. She said that fanfiction usually reads at a higher reading level, which I hadn't known before. I don’t read fanfiction; it's never appealed to me.

There were three speakers at the conference, total, and Ron Carlson and the second guy, Bret Anthony Johnston, were both incredible speakers. The third speaker was Lisa Lenard-Cook, and she wasn't as good, but still alright. Nothing groundbreaking from any of them; at least, nothing I hadn't heard before. Everyone has a different writing process, so I'm not even going to pass on what they said about that. For instance, Johnston said the purpose of a first draft is simply to get to a second draft. There is some truth to that, but I don't think the first draft is useless beyond that, which he seemed to imply.

Then again, they are all published authors and I'm not, so I have no solid authority in this situation. So I'll stop talking about it now.

There wasn't enough time for me to read all of my short story (a sad side effect of only having 15 minutes to present an entire short story), but I made do. The great thing was that since I went last year, I knew this was a possibility and so I didn't submit Mortal Angel, which I prefer, because that was a story I was not willing to cut down like that for the sake of a time limit. (This link takes you to a snippet of the story; note that the story has changed a bit, like with the first link, since then.)

I was pleased that during the question and answer session following my presentation (and the presentations of those presenting in the same session), someone asked about the philosophy behind the story, so I was able to talk about how it’s a story about what it means to be human and it’s asking the reader whether or not they think Descartes is actually human, even though he’s just organs and such in a tank. It means the audience was giving me the benefit of the doubt when it came to my intelligence level, which I always appreciate. They didn't approach it as "just a story," in any case.

That is how the conference went, in summary and biased toward my opinions and subjective experience. It was a great experience for someone who is working to become a published author. I came away feeling enriched.