I used to love writing my columns, radio scripts and other documents by hand. It's very calming and helps creative juices flow. But now I can't stand to put my pen to paper for anything more than a sentence or two because I know that I can type faster than I can write -- and because composing directly into a word processing program relieves me of the redundant need to type it after I write it.

By composing on my computer, my word processing software can keep count of my words automatically and makes sure that I don't make lots of stupid spelling mistakes. Sure, it misses a few words here and there -- because it can't tell what I really meant when I type the wrong word that could fit in the sentence. It often misses my mistakes when I inadvertently transpose letters, changing "from" to "form," and making similar typos. But, in general, having the automatic spellchecker lets me concentrate on the art of writing instead of making me pay attention to the mundane spelling problems that I would otherwise encounter.

Yet, this column was composed in part with traditional pad and paper instead of directly into my computer. The first few minutes felt good -- until I realized that it would take me much longer than usual to complete it. But I had to. My system had crashed.

Thank goodness, I usually take my own advice. In this case, I had been backing up routinely, so I had a fresh copy of almost all my data on separate disks that weren't part of the crash. Unfortunately, I didn't follow my advice as closely as I should have. It had been two weeks since my previous backup; so my most recent files were not backed up.

That put me in the uncomfortable position of knowing that I should just start from scratch by rebuilding all the software, including the operating system -- but knowing that I didn't want to take the chance of starting from scratch, because there would be at least one or two files that would be difficult to replace, and I'd lose all the new appointments and tasks that I placed on my calendar within the past few days. That would likely create chaos in my life if I inadvertently missed an important appointment or task.

So I painstakingly worked with tech support personnel to recreate part of my system, making it possible to retrieve the rest of my files before reformatting my hard drive and building the system again from the bottom up. It took me more than 16 man-hours over a three-day period to: make the system semiusable; then retrieve the files by copying them onto two dozen CDs (a time consuming task in itself); reinstalling Windows; then reinstalling my most critical applications.

I still haven't reinstalled all of my applications, set any of them up for the way that I like to work, or reloaded my data files. But I now have a working system again -- even if it doesn't yet have any of those productive tweaks that I always add. (I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I didn't miss copying a key file.)

I'll probably run out soon to buy a new generation back-up system so I can back up more frequently and spend less time doing it. And I'll take advantage of my fresh system to tweak it even further without the baggage of software I needed in past lives.

Most of all, I'll breath a sigh of relief that I backed up frequently -- because next time I might not be so lucky.