Composition of philosophy. August 22.

Still exhausted from two (highly enjoyable) weeks of tour guide duty, I took it easy on my first day off, and focused only on revising the Manchester lecture.

The original writing, a week or so ago, took 4 hours and 23 minutes.

The revision took 2 hours and 15 minutes.

The total, for around 23 pages (still a bit too long) was 6 hours and 38 minutes.

Normally the revision would go a bit more quickly than that for me– maybe an hour and a half. But still, 6 hours and 38 minutes is not an unreasonable amount of time for this sort of length.

One of the surprising facts about this recent exercise of using a “stopwatch” while writing has been the realization that, for me at least, the number of hours required to write all these pieces is fairly small. But it always feels longer than the final figure would indicate. This is no doubt a sign of the intensity of the hours. I only spent two and a quarter hours on the writing today, but it feels like triple that amount; breaks were needed between the sections, and so forth.

Tomorrow, I return to the home stretch on L’objet quadruple, though tomorrow it may entail nothing more than reorganizing and planning.

Oh yes, a small and perhaps unnecessary practical note… When it comes to lectures that involve travel, you can’t just print the final lecture. You also need to email it to your gmail account or some other site that will be accessible at your destination in case of an emergency. I can’t remember whether I’ve ever forgotten to take the printed lecture with me, but it’s certainly within the realm of possibility. Or maybe you’ll foolishly put it in your luggage and then the luggage is lost, or whatever.