A polytechnic student sent three paragraphs copying my cadence exactly — the short opening, the list of three, the quiet closing line.
Imitation is apprenticeship, not theft. Keep copying until your own sentences rebel. When they do, send me one paragraph — I will tell you which line sounds like yours alone.
I recognised my rhythms in your draft the way you recognise your face in a school photo — familiar, slightly embarrassing, not quite right. That discomfort is useful. It means you are ready to diverge.
Every writer begins as echo. I copied Joan Didion's paragraph lengths before I knew what I was copying. I copied local essayists who wrote about food and family until my own family interrupted the mimicry with specifics they deserved.
Specifics save you. Your campus canteen. Your bus route number. The teacher who mispronounced your name. No one else can forge those details. Cadence can be borrowed; place cannot.
The work is listening for when the echo picks up its own timbre — like a voice breaking in adolescence, sudden and irreversible. You will feel it before you can explain it.
Send me one paragraph when you are ready. I will not publish it without permission. I will read it the way someone once read mine — carefully, and without needing it to be finished.