Day 33. Writing chapters 39 (again) and 40 of 40 Patches

“The End”.  I’ve only gone and finished!!!   It is extraordinarily satisfying, at page 303, to write “The End”.  Actually, it’s probably fewer pages than that as I did re-write chapter 39 (I spent ages writing the first 39 but it turns out I only stenoed three pages) and I also re-wrote another chapter recently and haven’t actually deleted version one. Anyway, that really isn’t the point.

I wrote chapter 39 about my early 20th century Beltone gramophone and listening to records, incorporating a beautiful, recent musical memory from a record playing at an old radio and gramophone repair shop in Doha that mysteriously disappeared the next day.

Chapter 40 was about my 40th birthday party, which was an event at home that involved my friends cooking the big birthday lunch, paired with other friends of mine, ideally pairs who didn’t know each other at all or well. Genius idea from my perspective, especially that it meant I did nothing to help with the food other than enjoying eating it later!

I didn’t need the pre-steno blog writing-initiator again today, but I am not going to miss the opportunity to post my final blog about stenoing the last two chapters of the very, very rough draft of my memoir, 40 Patches.  I don’t like the name “40 Patches”, that will probably change, but it represents how the memoir idea came about so seemed a good place to start.

So now for the big edit/partial re-write, which I will not be blogging about. As with the steno element of my memoir, so too ends this series of accompanying posts.