Composition of Philosophy. August 10.

The drafts of 6B, 6C, and 6D only took a total of 55 minutes today. But don’t let that fool you– these sections need a lot more work. They are also the linchpin of the entire book, since Chapters 7, 8, and 9 are respectively “previewed” by each of these sections. Once 6B, 6C, and 6D are finished, in other words, the rest of the book will essentially write itself.

For this reason, I’m expecting these three sections to take quite awhile to finish off– not the usual hour or so per section to revise, but more like 3 or 4 hours apiece. That would make Chapter 6 a ten-hour project, and though that’s an awful lot of time for a fairly small number of pages, the subject matter deserves it.

I’m not going to tackle the revision of those pages tonight. But it was interesting to notice how many locks and bolts I heard loosening as these sections were drafted– often, simply putting problems on paper in the right order is the first step to their solution. The importance of outlines, again… I learned more filling up one page with black ink this morning than I’d learned in the past several months by working things out solely in my head.