Organize Your Creative Thoughts With Mind Maps

Whether you’re writing an article, a blog post, an ebook or sales copy you have to organize your thoughts before you actually start writing anything. I’m fortunate enough to be on “7 Day Ebook” writer Jim Edwards mailing list. Recently he has started a new column about cool sites with resources that can be really helpful.

The site he recommended was www.mindomo.com. This site provides totally free mind mapping software. They do have a paid version that has more features than the free version, but for my needs at least the free version is more than adequate. As far as I can tell the main difference between the free and the paid version is in the export functions. You can’t use some of the more advanced export functions in the free version, but I can live with the free options. In the free version you can export to an image, a text file or a rich text file.

So do you really need mind mapping software anyway?

Well, you can get by without it, but I would highly recommend some way to keep your thoughts organized. I like using mind maps to do that. Actually I consider the mind mapping process to be the most important step in my writing. By using mind maps I can prepare an entire ebook in a couple of hours. I can use it to break the ebook into sections, chapters and even paragraphs. When the mind map is done all I have to do is fill in the blanks. That’s right the mind map means that I just have to connect the dots.

What seemed to be the most exhaustive part of creating the ebook has now become the easiest thing in the world. If I can write between 200 and 500 words for each item on my mind map I’ll have a decently sized ebook in no time. Writing a 200 to 500 word piece is a far less challenging task than having to write an entire ebook at once.

Anyway. Try it. It’s free and it can be an awesome tool.