Notes on Inspiration

1.  What is Inspiration?  Inspiration is a graphical organizer that can also do your outlining for you.  It is an easy and quick way to brainstorm ideas and organize them in a manner that is perfect to help start the writing process.  You can keep it simple OR turn your ideas into glorious masterpiece.  MOST of all, Inspiration is fun. 

2.  Go to Programs and select Inspiration.
3.  You can use rapid fire and quickly capture many of your ideas down on the screen.  To use RapidFire, click on the RapidFire icon in the tool bar.  A red lightening bolt will appear in green oval.  Type the text that you want to add.  Press the enter key.
4.  You can then drag and drop your ideas and change the order of things with a simple mouse action.  Click on one of the green ovals.  Holding down the left mouse button, drag and drop the oval to the location that you wish.  IF you want to move ALL of the diagram, hold down the shift key and click on all of them.  Release the shift key.  You can now move the whole diagram.
5.  You can add pictures, change color and font of the text, add hyperlinks and put brief chunks of text in notes to illustrate your ideas.
          a. Click on the oval that you want to replace with a picture.  Click on the
           drop down arrow on the right side of the symbol palette.  Select the
           category that you want and then the picture. 
          b. Changing the font is done by using the tool bar along the bottom as is
           changing the default settings. 
          c. Click on the oval that you want to change the color of.  Click on the
           color box in the bottom tool bar and a color palette will appear.  Select the
           color you wish. 
          d. To add a hyperlink, go to Internet Explorer and copy the address.  Go
           back to the oval you wish to display it in and paste.  After pasting your
           hyperlink, hit the enter key.
          e. Add a note by clicking on the note icon in the toolbar.  Notes do appear
           in the outline mode. 

6.  Click on the Outline icon to change from the diagram mode.