Today I'm going to attempt a weekly series in which I extol the virtues of a tool that's been invaluable to me as a writer. Doesn't have to be fancy, or even new, but something that's just made my life a whole lot easier. And please, please, if you have any ideas of your own, send your story in to me.

Right now, it's the Document Map feature in Word. I'm finishing up the draft of a novel right now. Initially, I used Document Map just to navigate easily between chapters, which was simpler than scrolling through some 300-odd pages.

Then, I gave the book to my boyfriend to read, and he gave me comments. After I stopped crying and decided I'd keep working on the book, I pretty much sliced and diced the whole thing up, completely reordering the book and changing its structure.

I remember the physicality of the method Anne Lamott used in Bird by Bird when she discussed how she edited books; stacks of paper, index cards, actual, real reordering.

Well, I live in a tiny studio apartment that already has enough crap in it. Plus, I'm sort of lazy. I was going to do all the reordering on the computer.

Thank goodness for Document Map, once again. This time, I ordered my chapters by month over the span of one year. As I ruthlessly murdered 50 pages worth of Baby, some sections needed to go in the spring, some in winter, some in fall. Without my little helper on the left hand side of my screen, I'd be completely guessing where to put sections. Plus, with Document Map I could tell if one chapter was getting overloaded while another one was limping by anemically.

I know for a fact I am not using Document Map to the best of its capabilities. There are probably much more miraculous things that it does that I'm completely unaware of. But it's already made my life so much easier just by helping me organize the book. I'm reading through the second draft now and it's actually relatively not-bad. But we'll see what my boyfriend says.

Thanks, Document Map!