Composition of Philosophy. July 28, 2009.

I’m now finished revising through Chapter 4, Section C. That leaves only Section D to go before Chapter 4 is completed.

Statistics So Far (on completed sections only)

Total time elapsed= 19 hours, 26 minutes
Length= 15,773 words (51 double-spaced pages)

So far I had been disappointed at my speed on this project, but now it’s looking like the actual writing time has been reasonably efficient. 50 finished-and-revised pages in less than 20 hours is pretty good– no speed record for me, but solid and respectable. I certainly couldn’t have done it at any time prior to a couple of years ago. A more just criticism would be that I’m not writing enough hours per day. That’s certainly true, but I simply haven’t been in the mood much of this time, and have had to force myself sometimes to work on the project.

The cause for this is starting to seem more and more like travel fatigue. Now that I’ve begun to readjust to Cairo rhythms, it has become much more enjoyable to sit at the computer and write. Moreover, these first 50 pages are close enough to their finished state that the book now has a reality and a personality. The initial zero and infinity that haunt the outset of any project are long gone in the present case. On July 15 I had nothing but outlines, but now, on July 28, I have a book-like mass that is starting to feel like the real thing. Once you have that, motivation skyrockets.

It’s only 6:30 in the evening in Cairo, but I have decided not to revise 4D tonight. That’s partly because I’m supposed to read and comment on an administrative report, but also because 4D is important enough that it deserves a full day’s work, despite its short length of 3-4 pages. This is the one section where I can’t yet decide between two options on a specific question, though a decision is very close.

I have to hang out at home tomorrow and supervise a quick painting job… The upstairs neighbor seems to have had a leak of some sort, and both bedrooms have had paint crumble away and fall to the floor in recent weeks. It will be nice to have 4D to chew on while stranded at home.

Assuming 4D is finished tomorrow, that gives me July 30 and 31 to finish Chapter 5. One day should be enough, but I have two if I need it, to meet my new goal of having the first half of the book written by the end of July.

What then?

Well, first I need to proofread three old article drafts so that I can send them out to journals to be refereed. These have been on my plate since May, and I haven’t had the time to get to them. Where do all these articles come from? Usually they are invited lectures that I revise to fit the print format. And how do you get invited to give lectures? By publishing things that people enjoy reading. This is one of those examples of Levi’s principle that “the more you write, the more you will write.” It’s a lot harder to go from zero published articles to five than it is to go from five to thirty, strange though it may sound. People have journal issues to edit. They have anthologies to fill. If you’ve published a few good things, complete strangers will start to contact you from the blue, asking you to contribute to their journal or their edited volume. I was deep into my thirties before I had published a single legitimate article (two books had come first) but now I’m somewhere above 30 if you count published, in press, and pending articles and book chapters.

Why would I want to write so many? Because, each one expands my mind in some way. Did I mention the Gore Vidal line before? Supposedly he said: “never pass up a chance to have sex or appear on television.” Without commenting specifically on that piece of advice, I definitely subscribe to the maxim of “never pass up a chance to give a lecture or write an article or book.” These are the best ways to force yourself to think. The notion of thinking as being a private dialogue of the soul with itself is not, in my opinion, a correct notion. Situations are your co-authors. If you turn down an invitation to write something or speak somewhere, it’s like jilting a unique co-author who will never come calling again.

I have some ideas about how I will handle the endgame of the book in August, but will leave those thoughts until later in the week.