7000 words, 7500 meters

If yesterday was any indication, Thursdays are going to be something special for me as a writer. It turns out that I will be "building not writing" the book more literally than I thought. Contrary to my plan, it will consist of a substantial amount of cutting and pasting from this blog. There was some original writing to be done too (and I am very happy with what I came up, I must say), but it looks like I really have said already most of what I want to say in the book.

First, I wrote a 2000-word conclusion starting only with the 600-word sketch from this post. But as I began to write the introduction I could remember having covered particular topics before. Once I found the post and inserted it into the manuscript, I realized that another post could almost seamlessly continue the passage. And on it went. Working in this way I quickly put together a 5000-word chapter, which is perhaps a bit long for an introduction. Fortunately, since it is, precisely, an introduction, I should be able to shorten it by moving material into the main chapters of the book.

The short of it is that from 8 to 11 yesterday morning I added 7000 words to my book. As planned, I then went for run, resolving to celebrate by running a full 7.5 kilometers (one and a half circuits around the local park). As you can imagine, when I sat down to lunch, I felt great.

By spending a little bit of time reading and marking posts in the evenings until next Thursday, I should put myself into position to repeat the performance. That is, my writing for this blog seems to be paying off. Not only am I in great shape as a writer, I have a great deal of material for the book almost ready-made for the purpose. The book Research as a Second Language really will reflect my experience as the blogger who maintained Research as a Second Language.