Hot Tip for Writers: Use Kindle to Edit

Greetings, Writers! I’m working on my sequel to Dakota Blues right now (working title Key Largo Blues), and I’m using this fabulous editing trick that works like a charm: read your latest manuscript draft on Kindle. This allows you to see your ms. as if it were a book already, and man, do the errors stand out. Any clunky, repetitious language or logic errors become evident with the force of paintball splatter.

Step One: email your document to your Kindle address. (If you don’t know it, go to your Amazon account, click on Manage Your Content and Devices, click on Your Devices, highlight the target Kindle, and the email address will appear. Just send the doc as an attachment. I do it in DOCX format (Word 2013) but PDF might work, too, if you’re paranoid.
Step Two: Wait a few minutes, then go to your Kindle and open the document.

Reading my doc on Kindle tricks my brain into thinking I’m reading an actual book, and more often than not, on the first run-through it’s pretty bad. Open the document on your laptop and you’ll be able to do the edits on the actual Word doc as fast as you find them on the Kindle.

Okay, that’s your hot tip. Now, back to the salt mines.

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