Composition of Philosophy. August 11.

A few more hours this afternoon was enough to finish off Chapter 6, and put me within striking distance of the end of this book. Chapters 7, 8, and 9 have just been outlined in Chapter 6, and now it’s simply a matter of expanding on what I’ve already said.

Here’s an updated statistical table:

Introduction- 1:06 1,982 signes
Chapter 1- 6:31 24,713 signes
Chapter 2- 3:50 24,587 signes
Chapter 3- 4:36 24,293 signes
Chapter 4- 4:44 24,436 signes
Chapter 5- 4:49 24,327 signes
Chapter 6- 4:53 23,716 signes

Total=

30 hours, 29 minutes
for 82 pages

Chapter 6 has just as many words as the others, but many fewer signes. Ah yes, I just realized why… Chapter 6 makes extensive use of an abbreviation system that uses two-letter abbreviations in place of more complicated phrases. So, there are a lot of short “words” in that chapter.

As far as the content of the argument goes, I first noticed a strange new quirk about objects just over a week ago, and in Chapter 6 took a first stab at articulating it.

The primary obstacle I faced in Chapter 6 is that at times it feels too technical, too remote from any intuitive support. The litmus test is always: “Will this paragraph increase or decrease the reader’s ability to pay attention to the book?” I’ll let it sit for a little while, but I think I’ll have to work a bit on Chapter 6 to make it an attention-enhancer rather than an attention-reducer.

Chapters 7, 8, and 9 are the climax of the book. (Chapter 10 is just a “wrapping up loose ends” denouement of the sort that most books need.)

In order to build up some momentum for those chapters, I think this would be a good time to do a first reread of the existing manuscript, to try to regain some sense for where the book has been and where it is going.

Chapter 6 initially had far too many words in it, but I realized that the last three paragraphs would work perfectly as the introductory lead-in to Chapter 7, which is therefore almost written, even though the time was already charged to Chapter 6 writing.