The note-typing could take many weeks, but it collected everything in one legible place, and it ran all the raw material in some concentration through the mind.

Cracking the Book Outlining Code

When I’m finished doing this focused freewriting, I read it over and separate the dead from the living. The dead stuff—babble, off-point notions, wrong-headed thinking—I delete or save to other documents for use in a future project (Chapter 25). The living stuff—on-point ideas, interesting turns of phrase, experiments that could stand further pursu