What The Literary Machine can do for you

Creativity is not "connecting the dots" with a graphic program that weaves a web among them all over your computer screen. Creativity is seeing which dots are connected. In groundbreaking, ingenious ways, LM helps you do that. What makes LM different from other idea-generators? It doesn't pass off rote as thinking. Instead of showing you a generic list of logical formulas to wade through in hopes that one accidentally manipulates your ideas in some meaningful way, it works with your mind, illuminating connections and stimulating insight.

The Literary Machine is a dynamic archive and an idea management tool aimed at creative thinking — built especially with the writer in mind. It is packed with indexing and display techniques so general and potent that you will use it as an intelligence center. In a class by itself, it is virtually an extension of your brain. So, write in it. Collect and sort information and ideas in it. Make it your treasure chest of random notes and ideas for analysis and future reference. For, it will serve you well as the substance, catalyst, and processor for relating or reusing them in creative combinations.

LM is designed to fulfill needs, not fancy. So it does not fool around with features that your conventional word processor and email client already do well and more efficiently than a database could. Instead, LM teams with your other programs to accomplish what, till now, was possible only in your dreams.

In short, The Literary Machine invites you to put your creativity to work seriously and fruitfully in ways that no other computer programs do.

For this role LM incorporates a unique and powerful blend of idea-generation, information-analysis, information-management, and composition tools you find nowhere else.

Spark your creativity

Team LM with graphical mind- or concept-mapping software when you must memorize information, but experience the raw power of LM's no-nonsense text-based keyword matrix for true creative thinking through concept mapping, idea generating and brainstorming.

Can LM help you think "outside the box?" Answer: What box? LM's powerful "fuzzy thinking" kernel does away with "the box."
 

Here are some of the Machine's chief benefits to you:

• Track information as if through your brain, as if in a photographic memory.
• See the "big picture" more clearly.
• Order the chaos of random snippets of information: LM's breakthrough relational database structure helps you sort things out. It shows you the connections you would otherwise miss. Then its unique composition tools let you easily combine related snippets and order the resulting texts/information into a coherent whole.
• LM offers the best of both worlds, allowing you to use both a networked and a hierarchical organization scheme for categorizing information. The core database is the unique and powerful database for idea-generation and brainstorming that gives The Literary Machine its name. Its innovative "fuzzy thinking" kernel allows you to work with pure or hybrid concepts. You may assign any item to a project or topic as well, arranging these projects or topics in hierarchical (treelike) structures.

Discover the new kind of word processor

LM's compositional features also make it ideal for processing any kind of anecdotal information.

Quickly and easily organize the parts of your composition, case, or analysis. No more bewildering cut-and-paste operations in your conventional word processor: reorganizing, at any point, is a snap.

• Create data trees or outlines of the text and images you place on note cards. Just drag the topic nodes where you want them. Create several versions of a tree to experiment with structures or scenarios. In the end, just pick the one that works best.
• LM automatically chain-links the texts of your composition and exports the whole as a file your conventional word processor can edit.

Thus, as a document compiler, LM automates the process. So, rearranging the parts of your composition is a snap, because all it takes is a few swift movements of the mouse. You can create different outlines of the same material, if you want. Then just tell LM to compile the resulting document from any node you choose.

Though LM's HTML output is often suitable for publication as is, you can tweak it in any word processor that opens and edits HTML-files (such as MS Word™ or Corel WordPerfect™).

What's more, every note card used in this document is referenced to your ideas and available for use in any future document outline you create. So, LM is not just a tool for piecework: it is a workshop for the body of your work.

Manage all kinds of information

Consequently, though LM was designed to be a creativity tool with the necessary information-management tools, most users find that it handles all their personal information management needs. So, though the author did not intend to create the "Swiss Army Knife" of information managers, many users find that LM eliminates their need for other PIMs.

• Import or integrate any useful information you find. LM can import graphics and sound as well as text.
• Search not only imported information, but also the information integrated with your database through links to external files.
• Use LM to create, organize, and archive all kinds of random information under one interface: notes, research, email, newsgroup messages, documents, addresses, contacts, Web pages, Internet URLs, and shortcuts to programs, folders or files. That is, you can also use this multipurpose database as
• a personal information manager (PIM)
• a document manager (DMS)
• a knowledge manager (KMS)
• a bookmark manager

Enjoy the flexibility of a freeform database

LM is not a conventional database. It is a "freeform" database for information that just won't fit into a traditional one.

Conventional databases make you put information into predefined fields (like those in an address book). Such a database is too structured for storing random information. Conventional word processors are little better than spiral notebooks for storing it. And spreadsheets are wholly inappropriate for storing it. For storing random information, you need a freeform database.

But LM isn't even a conventional freeform database: It offers you a new way to PROCESS information, not just manage it. Whether this information comes flying across your desk or through cyberspace.

Build your information into one or both of two powerful, multipurpose frameworks that you can construct almost anything with:

• The Dictionary (a keyword database that keeps track of multiple levels of concepts plus their similes and inflections).
• The Projects/Topics subsystem.

Special utilities like the Word Boiler allow you to apply these powerful tools in more ways than you can imagine.

In The Literary Machine you get to work with note cards displayed on a space the size of a huge wall. You're not limited to your computer screen's dimensions.

And so, The Literary Machine . . .

• is ideal for random notes, anecdotal information, case facts, intelligence, fictional character bios, fictional plot maps, quotations, dictionaries, thesauruses, research, and so forth
• is very flexible and fast
• makes getting organized quick and easy

Grow with a program that grows with you: Though mastering all LM's potential applications is a journey like mastering the full potential of WordPerfect™ or high-end graphics software, LM is highly intuitive and easy to use at its basic level. Which is also its most important, revolutionary and powerful level. So, you gain the program's greatest benefits immediately. You can search your database without learning a query language. LM finds whatever you need so quickly and easily you'll be amazed.

The Literary Machine Group at YahooGroups.com

Kathy's Literary Machine Resources

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The LM Laboratory

Email: info@literarymachine.com

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