Lacey

Chapter 3

Evening

Inez, Darian, and I had KFC for dinner. Unhealthy? Sure. But we all like to have a little junk food every now and then - especially Darian. Even Inez, who's training to become a dietician, enjoys her French fries in limited amounts.

Once Inez left, Darian and I logged into our social media accounts. While Darian was scrolling down his feed to like speedrun pics, I checked the recent applications on Medium and Vocal to find a publication to edit for.

"Any luck?" asked Darian.

"Not yet," I answered.

"You'll find something," he tried to cheer me up with.

I continued to scroll.

Writing for a publication is one thing. That's easy. Becoming an editor, though? Good luck. Even the largest of publications with tens of thousands of followers can only manage so many people on the admin team.

Eventually, I find a publication for music: Music Refined. The follower count looked decent, at 50 thousand. Deprived of editors after a major behind-the-scenes event, their pinned article was a desperate plea for more.

The requirements were as follows.

-Must be a good writer (okay, that's easy)

-Minimum 3+ months on Medium or Vocal (also easy)

-Enjoy at least some sonically layered music (not too bad)

-Be nice and adhere to community guidelines

I then clicked on the application link. It was the typical application stuff: Medium handle, name, resumé questions. Nothing hard to answer. After working on filling it out, I followed and joined the Discord server.

9:00 PM

Before going to bed, I called Corianna.

"Hey," I greeted. "Happy 19th birthday!"

"Thanks," she responded.

"Anyhow, I'm applying to become an editor for Music Refined on Medium," I told her.

Corianna gasped.

"That music publication? Like, the technical one?!"

"Yeah," I responded.

"I didn't know you were into that kind of music!" she exclaimed.

I pondered my decision for a moment. While I did enjoy the greats, I wasn't exactly familiar with musician backstories. Or even names, sometimes. But on the other hand, I could really use the popularity boost.

"They have the most openings," I stated. "Besides, I can tolerate it."

"Well," stated Corianna. "Best of luck to you!"

She lowered her voice.

"I will tell you one thing, though."

"What?" I asked.

"I've been in their server and written articles for them. I also applied once to be an editor. And let me tell you - they're very nitpicky. They've rejected people for the typical typo-ridden and uncited articles, but they also have used the most stupid reasons as well. There have been very engaging articles perfectly cited in the correct format and that suck up enough to the readers - but still get rejected because a random word gets repeated twice in the same paragraph."

I closed the tab and logged out.

"None of that's really an issue to me," I said. "You know me - I like formalism in writing."

"So real!" Corianna chuckled.

(Tumblr version: https://www.tumblr.com/talesfromasnarkylisa/762868106203906048/chapter-3?source=share)