The computer ate it

I was working today on a piece that I'm writing for a friend of mine. He is teaching acting techniques to an amateur theatre group in a low-income area of Istanbul and the group needs support, of one sort or another, including financial. Nori's cousin is also in theatre, but in Munich, and her group received a donation from a wealthy woman who, rumour has it, might be Scandinavian and live in Europe. She seems to visit theatre groups incognito and then give money away anonymously. I'm not quite clear on how they know where the money comes from but thats' not for me to worry about. Nori's cousin is suggesting that Behzad's group might be one to whom she would be interested in donating.

Behzad and I have been working on this idea since late January or early February. We get together and talk for a few hours and then go away and have a little think before we have another go at it. Last week, I decided I had enough background to make a stab at writing the request. Today, I spent a couple of solid hours working on it and then, just before dinner, I lost it all. I thought the computer saved my work every five minutes but I turned the bloody thing inside out and couldn't find it.

I was writing my book the last time this happened to me. I think I lost a couple of chapters. I was quite philosophical about it at the time and wondered if I needed to rework that section and if this could be guidance from 'above' to let me know. In hindsight, I could see that I did indeed need to rework the material and was glad I to have had the opportunity. As I was hissing and spitting tonight at the lost work, I had to wonder the same thing.

I was meeting up with Behzad at the Napoli and so I explained the whole thing to him and repeated my thoughts about needing to rework what I had written. I realized as I said it, that I was trying to write what I thought he wanted to say, and not what he had actually told me he wanted to say. I'd had him tell me the story but he had never explicitly told me what he wanted this woman to know. So, tonight I got him to tell me.

Wow! There was the passion! It's what I hadn't included in what I wrote this afternoon. Tonight we decided that this request needs to be written in the form of a letter, as one friend would to another. It needs to be intimate and personal. Now I have the right voice and the right content and the right approach, and it feels more authentic. Once it's written, we will fire it off to Nori's cousin and she will see if she can put it in the path of this woman, whoever she is.

Sometimes it's a blessing when the computer eats your homework.