dissecting the post "heart ding"

by phil on Sunday Jan 11, 2009 4:55 PM
dlog, recursion is fun, talking about my writing process

I really like the concept of Dlog (aka Drunk Log). It's a friend-of-mine's web app that records your keystrokes while you type them out, and allows you to play back the unfolding of your thoughts.

I didn't use it when writing out the post "heart ding," but going through the revisions has a similar effect. What that post currently says is:

When I hear the ding of an incoming text message, the sound makes my heart flutter a little. Is it you?

What it said originally, when I was drafting it is:

When I get a text message, there's a ding sound that makes me heart flutter a little. Even though the majority of my texts are brute transactions, every now and then it's related to flirty, lovey dovey things, which is enough to create an association.

As you can see, my initial intent was to make a little observation about minutiae. But then I felt that it was better to make a jump from non-fiction to fiction. Firstly, to compress it. Second, to couch it in such a way that is less off-putting.

And, to boot, go to this link and you can see the keystrokes I used to write this post.

I wonder if a popular author could release the equivalent of "Director's Cuts" for their books. I'm sure that'd be interesting to big fans of that author, especially if there were major differences between drafts.