Editing

Currently, I am editing a short story I wrote for one of my classes, entitled "Laodicea Street." I know it is not the most interesting title; nonetheless, the title is important to the larger theme and symbols of the short story (and in general, I am not good at creating titles). Overall, the editing process is... well, a process. This is my fourth draft, and there always seems to be something I can fix or change. The hardest part is making sure the tone is consistent and the characters are consistent.

When I am done editing my short story, I will send it to a literary magazine with the hopes of getting published. My writing professor says that one student every year, out of twenty or so, gets published. So my odds are not necessarily the greatest. I will keep updating the publishing process and the end result. In the mean time, here is a sneak peak of my short story:

Laodicea Street

Knock-knock-knock

            Don Walker opened the oak-styled fiberglass door of his house to discover Mrs. Laura Bareilles and Mr. Richard Bareilles, his neighbors who lived five houses down on Laodicea Street. They greeted Don with earnest smiles, mentioned how beautiful the day was, how the rest of the week was supposed to be just as beautiful. Mrs. Bareilles, a lean woman, was dressed in a blue tank top and black leggings. Mr. Bareilles, a stout man, wore a blue polo draped over a beach-ball-belly that overshadowed his khaki pants.

            Don looked at the both of them, then, past them up and down the street. Both the Bareilles looked back as well to see what had captured his attention, but all they saw was the uniformed line of white picket fences, blocking in the cookie-cutter houses along the road. Further up the road, a mailman walked up to a front door and placed a package down.

            “We don’t suppose you know why we are here?” said Mrs. Bareilles, facing Don again.

            “Um… Jimmy didn’t do anything, did he?” Don replied.

            “This is not about Jimmy.” She pursed her lips, took a deep breath, and folded her hands. She looked over at her husband and he looked back, nodding his head while rubbing his doughy hand over her rigid shoulder. “It’s about the Schleck family—I am sure you heard about them in the news.”

            “Yes, it’s very sad,” Don said, looking down at the ground. He tried to seem sympathetic while he searched the filing cabinets of his brain. Schlecks… Schlecks. Oh, the Schlecks. They lived at the end of the street—he remembered reading the newspaper article on them: “Couple Brutally Murdered.” Mr. and Mrs. Schleck were found with their hands and feet bound together with plastic zip ties, shot at point blank range. The newspaper didn’t go into gruesome detail, but rumor on Laodicea Street was that the murderer used a sawed off shotgun and the police had trouble identifying faces.