Out of the mouths of Carnegie Mellon University freshmen come great wisdom. My daughter, the lovely and talented Chloe, turned me on to this amazing tool. I’ve got a behemoth of a manuscript that desperately needed reorganization, but because it was so large, I’d all but given up.

Then came Scrivener.

The brainchild of UK-based Literature and Latte, it’s primarily a Mac app, but there’s also a version in beta for PC. I’ve installed it on my Mac laptop and my PC desktop, and the .scriv files move easily between the two thanks to Dropbox. While it’s not for everyone (the tutorial is long, but it’s worth it), you can download the trial version before you give up the very reasonable $45.

By organizing scenes and chapters into notecards on a virtual corkboard, Scrivener allows me to move them around at will, get a look at the over-arching structure and color code each scene to denote point of view. I am weeping with relief and getting more writing done more efficiently than ever before.

I just might get this thing finished yet.