Composition of Philosophy. July 25.

It’s only 5:30 PM, so there’s still plenty to be done today. But here are some statistics. (It can be counterproductive to worry too much about this in your own case, but having never before “timed” myself while writing a book, I was curious to know exactly how many physical hours of writing it takes.)

For those who missed some of the earlier posts, when the French use the term signes they apparently mean the number of characters including blank spaces. And luckily, my old American version of AppleWorks is able to count in that currency.

Introduction
writing time from zero to final draft= 1 hour, 6 minutes
length= 1,982 signes

Chapter 1
writing time from zero to final draft= 6 hours, 31 minutes
length= 24,713 signes

Chapter 2
writing time from zero to final draft= 3 hours, 50 minutes
length= 24,587 signes

If it’s hard to intuit the meaning of a given number of signes, Chapters 1 and 2 are both around 14 pages in double-spaced Times New Roman.

A couple of things worth nothing…

*The Introduction was by far the least efficient in terms of words per minute. That is to be expected. We (meaning most humans) are always cautious and careful with Introductions. We want to set the right starting note, and we haven’t built up momentum yet. Besides, it was only an hour and six minutes out of my life, so even if inefficient the damage isn’t too severe.

*Notice the big difference in time elapsed on Chapters 1 and 2. Chapter 2 will probably be the fastest of the entire book. It’s the Husserl/Heidegger chapter, I know my take on those two exactly, have done it many times, and generally enjoy the topic. So, little surprise that it went so quickly.

By the end of the book, it’s possible that a few of the difficult chapters will take 10 hours or so from zero to finish.

Total elapsed time so far (counting only finalized chapters) would be eleven and a half hours for nearly thirty pages of pretty good writing. Not great yet, but already presentable.

The key point here is that there’s no shame in approaching polished work by stages. Trying to write really good material directly from zero is much more stressful than the method I now use: write correctly arranged slop, then clean up the slop, then polish a few more times. Morale is always higher if you have something done, even if it’s not yet fully cooked.

Think of it this way… By the end of the week I should have right around 70 pages of pretty good “final” material. By “final,” I mean I wouldn’t be embarrassed if others read it. But it could still be even better. And over the next month, whenever I have some free time, I can reread those pages and continually improve them, trying to make them an actual pleasure to read, rather than leaving them as a sufficient fulfillment of dutiful academic rigor.

I also want to emphasize that this method, of approaching excellence by a series of many drafts, is completely counter-temperamental for me. That is to say, at a younger age I frowned on it and was even incapable of it. I used to wait for inspiration, and used to expect perfect wording on the first try.

The problem was, that instinctive method is the one that led me to spend 3 years continually rewriting the first 50 pages of my dissertation. Project that level of productivity over the course of a lifetime, and it wouldn’t have been the sort of life I had in mind.

It should be remembered that “productivity” does not refer primarily to filling lines on a c.v. It refers to forcing yourself into confrontation with surprising and difficult subject matter. If a specific author confuses or bothers me, the first thing I think is: “I need to write an article about this.” Why? Because that’s the best way to force yourself to figure out what’s going on with the material.

Coming up: the Chapter 3 revisions. The last three sections of that Chapter are actually too short right now, which means I’ll be adding new material while going along, and of course that will be a big slowdown. This Chapter may take even longer to finish off than Chapter 1 did.