This essay demonstrates how the use of the keystroke logging tool Inputlog allows for a fine-grained analysis of literary writing processes. But before the writing process can be studied, the keystroke logging data needs to be transformed into an output that is suitable for a textual genetic analysis. For this purpose, this essay investigates the potential of combining text with keystroke logging data in TEI-conformant XML. Besides discussing how revisions can be specified in the encoding, the author asks herself how traces of digital writing processes differ from analogue traces (and, taking it one step further, how keystroke logging can be used to record more details about the genesis of a text), what kind of decisions need to be made when encoding keystroke logging data, and how the peculiarities of digital authorship leave their mark on its encoding -as well as on the interpretation and argumentation that underlies the transcription. This will demonstrate that the level of detail that is recorded in keystroke logging data requires us to consider the way in which the text was typed when we design our encoding schemas. The goal of the TEI-XML encoding of the keystroke logging data is to provide transcriptions of writing processes that could be used to analyse (the sequence of) revisions and text production in each logged writing session in relation to their specific location in the text. 2 This work has been conducted as part of my PhD research within the project

The beginning is a foundational element in literary fiction: it is the entrance into a textual world. In this article, I analyse the genesis of the first chapter of Gie Bogaert’s born-digital novel Roosevelt (2016), which was logged with the keystroke logging software Inputlog. The beginning of Roosevelt supplies important information for the understanding of the textual world, takes on a key role in the ‘recentering’ of the reader to this world, and facilitates an immersive reading experience through the use of the second-person singular, and through making an appeal to the readers’ sensory and spatial imagination. Focusing on the textual development, I ask the question how four important aspects of the novel were implemented in the first chapter during the writing process. I will demonstrate how Bogaert experimented with explicating these aspects, but later decided to refer to them rather implicitly. Overall, this analysis demonstrates how Inputlog, in case it is used by literary authors, may facilitate textual genetic research on present-day works of literature.