Creek Running North

Good writing sinks, no ripples nor meniscus. The water takes it without complaint. Good writing dislodges no riverbed stones.

Take yards of words and barricade the river, pour heavy berms to stem the flow, riprap the banks. Come the storm, your work will wash away. A handful of words tossed with force enough will lacerate the surface, raise a loud SCAUP. Spray will wet the far bank. Crests and troughs scatter upstream and down.

Good writing makes no noise; no droplets arc bright into the air. It is written, it slides seamless past the surface, it nestles in the gravel of the bar. A slight, subtle deflection, but the river changes course.

The best writing does not sink at all, but grazes the surface there, and farther there, a skein of lazy parabolas, and lands on the far bank unwet.