If writing a longish piece, I often find that when I go to 'submit' I get a blank screen with a message that I have 'timed out' or some such, and yesterday I found that, as described above, the little hourglass thing just went around and around, and after about 15 mins. I got the timed out 'gotcha', and when I re-signed in all my careful composition had gone forever Grrrr!!
In that situation next time, I'll highlight and copy, and if I have to start again at least I can paste my work into the new blank page. Maybe.