In the Lit Blitz Hall of Fame, we celebrate authors published in previous Mormon Lit Lab contests by asking their thoughts on Mormon Lit, writing, and life. Check back twice a month for new Hall of Fame interviews.
Previous Lit Blitz pieces by Lee Allred:
"Creature from the Back Lagoon" (12th Annual Mormon Lit Blitz)
"Reformed Egyptian" (10th Annual Mormon Lit Blitz)
"Beneath the Visiting Moon" (7th Annual Mormon Lit Blitz)
"Golden Contact" (5th Annual Mormon Lit Blitz)
"Where Nothing Lives But Crosses" (Meeting of the Myths)
A Guest Essay by Lee Allred:
The Practical Side of the Mormon Lit Blitz
Back when I was an undergraduate at BYU, the school had two student-run fiction magazines. The lofty literary magazine Inscape which published mainstream fiction, and the pulpy The Leading Edge which published sci-fi genre fare. Both were run out of the same office down in the basement of the old JKHB Annex.
There’s room for both in modern Mormon Literature. And in the Mormon Lit Blitz contest, as well. Much if not most of contest entries undoubtedly favor the Inscape literary approach. It comes as no surprise that I as a pro science fiction author prefer dabbling in pulpy genre fare.
The Lit Blitz represents a unique writing challenge. You not only have to write a story, you have to squeeze it into a thousand-word framework. Then you not only have tell a fully formed story in a thousand words, you have to make it a Mormon-centric story. Then, if you’re writing a genre entry, you not only have to write a fully realized Mormon-centric that complies with genre expectations and structure.
Keep in mind that for mainstream literary fiction, a vignette, a well-crafted scene or mood piece is story enough/ Craft. Mood, message is everything. Genre fiction is plot-driven, requiring what Algis Budrys mapped out as the Seven-Part Story: character in context with a problem, try-fail cycles, resolution, and denouement (reader validation). You can “ellipse” some of these parts, but they must be present, even if only implied.
Story, Mormonism, genre tropes, structure —you have to squeeze all that into a genre MoLit Blitz story entry like little Russian nesting dolls.
For my own amusement, I add one more little Matryoshka doll to the core of my Blitz stories. I write what I call “Mormon monster movie” stories, LDS stories that take their subject/thematic cues from old classic monster flicks and sci-fi drive-in movie fare. Tales of vampires and werewolves, Frankensteins and mummies, invisible men and creatures from lagoons, flying saucer invasions and giant chicken hearts that eat Nauvoo. It’s a device I use to keep me enthused and eager to write my next Blitz entry. They’re simply fun to write.
But writing Blitz stories for fun isn’t my only reason. I write them for practice.
I can hear authorial eyes roll already. It’s an oddity of the writing profession that the word “practice” is anathema to writers. In other art forms, practice is an inevitable part of the creative process. Painters make thumbnails, sketches, and studies before tacking a canvas. Dancers and actors and musicians practice for days and weeks before performances.
Only writers seem to expect that their every typed word is Carnegie Hall-worthy straight out of the box.
We writers point to the million words of junk typed in our early years, the stack of rejection letters earned on our way to pro-dom as our “practice,” failing to note to that in other art forms even seasoned masters practice. Fred Astaire practiced just as hard on his last film as he did his first. Probably more.
I’ll leave the effulgent (and well-deserved) praise of the Blitz outlet for Mormon creativity, its importunate as an institution to others. (The Goldbergs have indeed created an irreplaceable venue for Mormon Lit.)
Instead, I praise it on practical grounds.
For eight years I helped administrate the Oregon Coast Writers Workshops. I’ve seen first hand writers balk at practice assignments. The effort needed to write a whole story (!) wasted on practice raised hackles. Paradoxically, they begrudged writing short practice scenes even more — if they had to write something for practice, make it something complete in a saleable form.
At a thousand words, the Blitz is the perfect size for a writer to both practice and experiment. A thousand words. A mere morning’s typing session. Surely one can spare a single morning in a year to practice, to try new things.
The concentrated form of a thousand-word flash fiction piece as I described above amplifies the time spent. It’s a heavy workout, exercising new mental muscles to lift a micro fiction piece into place.
For new and beginning writers, not only do you get in writing practice — writing a themed story to specification, to length, to deadline — but you also get practice in submitting a finished story to an editor, of receiving rejection letters or — if you’re lucky — the practice of selling a story, signing contracts, going through the publication process. And I think they’re even offering a small payment these days.
For established writers, you get a venue to experiment with new forms, techniques, subject matters — all with a not insubstantial chance of publication and renumeration.
In short, if you’re an LDS writer and you’re not submitting to the Blitz, you’re being a bit of a blockhead.
The Blitz contest may not be what Orson Whitney had in mind with his “Miltons and Shakespeares of our own,” but I do believe it is one of the stepping stones to getting to that point, both for Inscape writers and ink-stained TLE genre drudges like myself.
Thank you, Lee Allred, for sharing your insights with us for the Lit Blitz Hall of Fame!
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