If you did it once, you can do it again and better

I never imagined my complaint about the power outage the other day would have garnered so much attention. Cool.

I was pithy in my complaint because I didn't want to bore my readers with detail, and plus I only had a few moments. I've decided a further explanation is needed.

So, what happened, how I ended up losing the nice post I wrote about me and my son, was not because I didn't save it. In fact, I write a lot of my stuff 2-3 days before I publish it, which gives me a few days to proof read and edit if it's needed. I can't do this for timely stuff, but if it's not timely, I can and do.

What I did with this post is I CUT the post from the saved version and pasted it onto a NEW post so that it would be posted under the current date, and be the most recent post on my blog. See.

Except, right here the power went out. I never had time to save the NEW post, and the old post was saved, without any copy, of which I had cut.

So, what do we learn from this? If you want to transfer a post from an old date and make it a new post, use COPY not CUT.

It's actually funny, because if the power had gone out one second earlier or one second later, I never would have lost my post. I suppose it was God telling me not to publish it -- Right???

On a side note. I used to be a journalist. One time I wrote this perfect story that I had spent hours trying to find the perfect wording. Then, just as I was about to save, the power went out.

So now I had 20 minutes to meet the deadline, and I had to rewrite the entire story that took me 2 hours to write. I did it. And, as my old art teacher once told me, "if you did it once, you can do it again and better."

Well, I rewrote it, had it in on time, and I that report won me an award at the end of the year.

What we learn from experiences like this, though, is SAVE, SAVE, SAVE, SAVE as often as possible. But, if you lose it, write it over and better.

I've lost many things since then that I thought were brilliant. And even though it irritates me to no end, I always seem to be happier with my rewrite. Not always, but most of the time. There were a few times I was never able to recapture the magic.

The key, though, is to rewrite it right away while all your brilliant ideas are still fresh in your head. Or draw it again if you are an artist (aren't we writers artists too?)

That's one of the things I like about writing on Blogger, because of the autosave thing. However, on occasion, the autosave doesn't work. And if it had worked after I pasted my post, I never would have lost it.

So, oh well.

I have rewritten the story about me and my son. I will post it the next day there is no other timely news to blog about. And it is better written than the first version.

But, I'll let you guys be the judge of that.