A few weeks ago, I posted this video, detailing how a short story of mine had been accepted into NULC, or the National Undergraduate Literature Conference in Utah. This was kind of a big deal. I haven’t been published or accepted into any writing contest thing since 6th grade when my short story about getting showed in got into a local anthology. Now that my college career is coming to an end, it’s started to dawn on me that I need some publishing credentials under my belt other than random guest blogs. The conference was last weekend, and I honestly can’t remember having that much fun.
Quinn, the boyfriend, and my good friends Kelly and Margaret were also accepted, so the four of us hooked up as a team and basically got fully funded by the university to go. Thursday morning we all got on a plane to Salt Lake City, excitement drumming in our veins. Upon arriving we rented a car because the conference itself was in Ogden, about a 45 minute drive away. That night we had dinner with the rest of the conference and accidentally all wore purple, which also accidentally matched the school colors of the college the conference was hosted at, Weber State. For the record, it’s not pronounced like spider web, but WEE-ber. I still think that’s silly, but moving on.
Friday only Kelly read, but she did great and we realized that in addition to reading our selected pieces, afterwards the audience could ask questions and provide commentary on what we’d presented. This was a little harrowing for me, because as I mentioned in the video all those weeks ago, my story is stupid. It’s about superheroes and there is absolutely nothing literary about it. Naturally, I was concerned that my silly story would seem to make light of whatever trauma that probably existed in my fellow presenter’s pieces.
I was half right. My reading was Saturday morning at 10ish, and the other people in my room read, in order, a flash fiction piece about two people hooking up at a party (in a dramatic, not comical way), a piece about the Spanish Civil War and how a mother and daughter watched executions every day looking for their husband/father, and a piece about a girl’s brother shooting himself and the fallout of the trauma. I was third to read and very, very nervous. But inanely, it went over well, like the poetry I’d read the night before at the conference’s open mic night. I got to read both Nerdz with a Z and A Romance for the Prairie Dog, and got numerous compliments for them. Wtf.
Somehow, I became almost the expert on humor in the room, with everyone asking me questions about how to write humorously without forcing it and asking about my process. Granted, I don’t think I should be the expert on humor writing, but my answers basically boiled down to one key fact: don’t take yourself to seriously. I joked about my old poetry about the color black and how during college I decided I was done being depressed and wanted to have fun with life. And people continued to laugh.
I had no idea how validating it was for people to not only enjoy my writing, but to laugh at it with me. I write jokes because I spent way too much of my life waxing poetically about boys who didn’t love me and bullies who wouldn’t leave me alone. I honestly never expect people to actually laugh at them. But they did! Oh, glory days, they liked me! They really liked me!
But then something completely mind-blowing happened. After the panel was over and I went back to my seat, a girl from the audience approached me and, of all things, asked me if I had a blog. Obviously, I affirmed the existence of my blog (website, really) and gave it to her. We had a brief conversation about Batman because why not, and when I arrived home after a thoroughly enjoyable day at the George S. Eckles Dinosaur Park and a short flight back to Portland, I found that she not only wrote in my guestbook, but also subscribed to me and my collab channel on YouTube and “liked” my website on Facebook. That, alone, was more validating than anything, because not only did this person whom I’ve never met before enjoy the writing that somehow got accepted into a literary conference, but she wanted to read more of it. How often does that happen??
The trip was mostly fun because of the people I was with. Quinn, Kelly, and Margaret were the perfect travel companions, and the three other boys from Pacific who attended (Ben, Connor, and Nick) were lovely as well. But I was there for a writing conference, and I can’t imagine it going any better. I’m really glad I decided to stay in college.
You kill me, Bri. You rocked that conference, and as far as the open mic night went – you owned it! It doesn’t surprise me in the least that someone wanted to hear more of what you had to say, that they liked your page on FB, and subscribed to your YouTube channel. You’re the shiz, yo.