If you type changes directly into the contract draft and they vanish, that's the draft doing what it's designed to do. The draft is a generated document — it doesn't write back to the booking, and any time the booking is saved, Gigwell regenerates the document from the booking and the template. Manual edits are replaced in that regeneration.
Make the change where it will stick
Decide where the change really belongs. Anything specific to this deal — money, dates, contacts, terms — belongs on the booking. Anything that should appear on every contract belongs in the Google Doc template.
Edit the booking (or the template) with the change you wanted to type into the draft.
Save the booking.
Go to the Contract tab and click Create Contract (older interface: Create Drafts) to regenerate the draft with your change in it.
Review the regenerated draft and send it.
If you really must edit the draft directly
There is a narrow path that works, as long as you don't save the booking in between:
Open the draft and make your edit.
Close the draft.
Click Send immediately — before making any other change to the booking.
Anything that triggers a booking save between your edit and sending will regenerate the document and discard the edit, so treat this as a last resort rather than a normal workflow.
Good to know
Because everything flows from the booking and the template, putting the change in the right place also means it carries through to the invoice, the itinerary and anything else generated from the same booking.
If you find yourself making the same manual edit on every contract, add it to your template once instead. Reusable clause text can also live in your phrases library so you can drop it in where needed.