Do you remember the story about the little Dutch boy who walked by a dike and discovered a small leak? Knowing the hole could quickly cause a break in the dike—unleashing the sea on unsuspecting villagers—he stuck his finger in the cavity and saved his country from disaster.

Nice story—but do you ever feel like MS Word does that to your creative juices?

A slo-o-o-o-o-w drain.

When I first began my career as a freelance writer, I wrote every manuscript in Word. Juggling multiple documents or endlessly scrolling up and down in search of a morsel of information went with the territory.

But the waste of time was ENORMOUS and the drain on my creativity was INCESSANT. What's a stronger word than "annoying"? IRRITATING!

When the developers created Microsoft Word, they sure didn’t have writers in mind.

You Can Stop the Hemorrhaging

Then about ten years ago, I stumbled across a word-processing program that transformed the way I write. Since then, I’ve used it to compose a half-dozen books and never looked back.

This transformative software? Scrivener.

At the end of this email you'll discover how you can learn how to use this amazing tool.

Scrivener was created by writers for writers. Best-selling novelists, nonfiction writers, screenwriters, and academics rely on this handy tool. When I was a pastor, I used it for researching and planning my sermon series. Here’s what I like about the word processor:

Index Cards. Back in the day, I organized my books by writing one-sentence summaries on sheets of paper—and then moving them around until it made sense. Scrivener gives you virtual index cards you can adjust until your TOC flows to your liking.

Sidebar Table of Contents. This one feature made all the difference in the world for me. Click a button and the index cards transform into your table of contents on the left-hand side. I can write a book chapter-by-chapter without switching from document to document. I just click the chapter title and—voila!—I’m there. Best of all, I can move chapters around if I still want to adjust the flow.

See an example of the interface below...