Second Drafts

I have been unspeakably, unforgivably lazy about personal writing since I've been in London. A combination of work, travel, visitors, etc. has kept me both busy and blissful, two things that are not conducive to the creative process.

To get myself back into the swing of things, I decided to embark on a pleasant project: journaling these last few months of travel. I needed to jot down my thoughts on living in London, as well as my trips to Paris, Italy, Budapest & Prague before the memories started to fade. So yesterday, I opened a Wordpad file and started typing. I often use Wordpad to make rough notes because I can't stand the formatting corrections that Word makes while I'm writing.

So last night, while I was sleeping, my laptop — which I am now officially at war with — thought it would be fun to restart itself. My evil, Vista-running computer has decided that it needs to update its software about 2-3 times a week. This has led to many lost documents and much swearing.

Whenever I lose a big document like this, I take a deep breath and try and look on the bright side. Being forced to write a second draft often leads to clearer phrasing, a better overall flow. I remember what it is that I meant to say, so I can concentrate instead on how I want to say it.

I think a good writing exercise would be to fake myself out by writing second drafts without looking at my first drafts. So I guess Vista's brokenness is sort of a blessing in disguise.