The days pass by quiet. A bit like the weather: quiet and grey. I am waiting more than anything else. Waiting to move. First back to Amsterdam. Then start a new job. Then move on to a new appartment in Amsterdam. In the meantime I am writing. (F. is also finishing work – so I’m not much of a spoiler of Xmas-festivities).

I am writing in a strange way, working on the same article now since 2 weeks? It’s a round-up of my research at the Jan van Eyck; the story is the one I’ve been telling in the public lectures earlier this month.

The framework was already there (in my head, in the powerpoints that I used in the lectures). I basically wrote everything down and added all the necessary or nice quotes and references. I could only get it ‘out’ by not being totally involved with the sentences that I typed out – by simulating that I was not wholly present while writing. Simply too much material. maybe afraid to finish? And although I consciously threw out quite a few subjects (like a comparision of blogging and notebooks, of blogs and commonplace books; and the whole public – private issue), I still ended up with over 20.000 words.

That was 4 days ago.

So it feels almost as if I’m trying to write a thesis.

I’m used to write texts of 1000 – 2000 words. Sometimes, sometimes I may write 4000 words.

I spent the past days making a first edit. Not working too hard – a few hours a day. Cleaning up, deleting doublures (there are still a lots – I tend to state everything five times in the same text), shifting whole paragraphs. Again doing that while feeling not totally involved.

The first edit is done. It still is 20.000 words long.

And I am afraid it still is too much of a simple description of the history, present and possible future of blogging – zooming in on issues of authorship and software – mostly software. (Well, I know what Latour says about descriptions, but I’m not so sure that my description fits his criteria…)

But, well, I hope I now have all the ‘material’ – to get fully involved with the ‘sentences’. I know I’ll be able to throw out at least 10.000 words.