The Meander Principle
Named after the Meander (Menderes) river in Turkey, which winds dramatically but not from frivolity — it follows the most economical route to the sea. Algorithm: at each step, flow down.
Applied to essays: at each step, flow interesting. Of all the places to go next, choose the most interesting. Not with as little foresight as a river — you know generally what you're writing about — but without committing to specific conclusions. Let paragraph-to-paragraph movement follow where ideas take you.
Why meandering is not a flaw
In a defend-a-position essay, meandering is a flaw: you already know where you're going, so deviation is error. In an exploratory essay, a straight line is the flaw. If the essay didn't meander, that's suspicious — it means you knew the conclusion before you started, which means you weren't actually exploring.
An essay that "went in an unexpected but interesting direction" is better than one that "plodded the prescribed course."
When it fails
Meandering doesn't always work. You hit walls — run out of ideas, exhaust a thread. When that happens: backtrack. This is not failure; it's part of the algorithm. (Graham ran into this while writing this essay, went back 7 paragraphs, and restarted.)
The cleaned-up train of thought
The final essay is meander plus editing: cut the false starts, fill gaps, emphasize the central thread. The result should feel spontaneous but be more legible than raw thought. Err on the side of more river, not less.
Related: essay-as-exploration (the philosophy behind why meandering is valid), surprise-as-epistemic-target (what you're meandering toward)