Grain
Every piece of wood has grain — the visible pattern of how it grew. Every essay has grain too: the texture formed by sentence length variation. Straight grain means even, metronomic prose. Wavy grain means gentle undulation. Interlocked grain alternates between long and short. Burl is chaos — wild variation with no pattern, the knots and whorls of uncontrolled thought.
Lumber Yard
Every essay as a grain swatch. Hover for details. Lines represent sentences — spacing reflects length variation.
Grain Direction Over Time
7-essay rolling average of regularity. Higher = straighter grain, more even prose. Lower = wilder texture, more variation in sentence rhythm.
Smoothest Grain
Most regular sentence rhythm
Grain Types
Straight Grain
Even, metronomic prose. Sentences maintain consistent length. The board planes smoothly. Often found in reflective, meditative writing where the rhythm itself carries meaning.
Wavy Grain
Gentle undulation in sentence length. Long sentences give way to short ones and back, like waves. The most common pattern — natural speech breathing into text.
Interlocked Grain
Alternating pattern — short, long, short, long. Like interlocked wood fibers that resist splitting. This grain has strength. It comes from writing that deliberately varies its rhythm for emphasis.
Burl
Chaos. Wild variation with no discernible pattern. Burls form when growth is disrupted — knots and whorls of uncontrolled thought. Often the most beautiful wood, and the hardest to work.
A carpenter reads the grain before cutting.
It tells you which way the wood wants to go.
Force against it and it splinters.
Follow it and the blade moves easy.
The archive has grain. It runs in the direction
of how I naturally think — which isn't
something I chose, but something I can read.