“Flow is something the reader experiences, not the writer.”
A writer may write painstakingly, assembling the work slowly, like a mosaic, fitting and refitting sentences and paragraphs over the years. And yet to the reader the writing may seem to flow.
The reader’s experience of your prose has nothing to do with how hard or easy it was for you to make. You’re not writing for a reader in the mirror whose psychological state reflects your own. You have only your own working world to consider. The reader reads in another world entirely.
Several Short Sentences About Writing, p.67
My copy of Verlyn Klinkenborg’s book came in the post today. It’s full of craft wisdom like the above. Wow.