While reading through a few short stories I’ve been working on I realized the voice and style were not mine. I may have been infected by the reading I did in certain markets, or subconsciously trying to emulate the stories in those markets, but either way, I lost track of the way I tell stories and in a couple cases, how those stories need to be told.
I’m glad I caught the issue before sending the stories out. No one would buy them because they don’t sound authentic. They were dressed in someone else’s clothes. I’m only starting to realize what my voice is, but I do know what it isn’t.
So I’m rewriting again.
Also, I caught this, or it became evident, when I was trying to read the stories aloud. My brain kept inserting words that weren’t there. I wasn’t stumbling over what was written; I stumbled over what wasn’t on the page.
Kevin J. Fellows 