One of the harshest realities of writing comes in the old adage that sometimes you must “kill your babies”. In other words, as you draft and redraft, some of those gems of inspiration – those brilliant scene ideas, snatches of incisive or witty dialogue – need to be removed for the sake of the story, often to be lost for ever. The Nursery is where you place your babies to keep them safe.

One way to prevent, or at least minimise, these painful but necessary occurrences is to, as they say, “Keep your powder dry”.  The later you move from outlines, sketches and broad strokes to specific details, the less likely your precious offspring will need to die for the greater good.

To this end, Story Distiller provides you with Nursery Notes. Notes made in the Nursery are independent of Story Projects and accessible from anywhere within the app.

Just select “New Baby” from the Actions menu (option-cmd/ctrl-alt-N) or click the button shown here, which you will find in the second group of buttons from the left in the commands bar at the top of any page in the app. to create a new note. 

To find any note you have made earlier, select “Find Babies” (option-cmd/ctrl-alt-F) or click the “Find a note in the Nursery” button.

You will be presented with a list of all the notes you have saved and a Search field.  Just start typing in the search field to narrow down the list.

Once you’ve found the note you want, double click on it to view or edit it. Or, if the note is a story idea, select it from the list and click “Create New Project” to take the note from an idea to reality.