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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Thanks for the reminder! I’ve done this in the past, and it works great for me too.
Super tip Lynne.
What a great tip! I’m not writing anything beyond my blog… but I guess you never know. I’m tempted to send some random document to my Kindle just for the thrill of seeing my words in “print”!
Do it, Janis! Maybe you will get inspired!
Yeah! Great tip. Thanks for sharing. I”m saving this post in my memoir bookmark for when I’m ready to revise it heavy like that. Right now I”m just tightening scenes. 🙂
You’re welcome! I don’t often include writer or publishing tips here at AST because its main mission is related to aging, but so many of us are writing memoirs or finally chasing our dream of writing, that it makes sense to share occasionally. But I’ll save Fridays for the main mission. BTW it’ll be fun to find out who is writing.
That’s a great tip – thanks for sharing!
Nancy
Happy to help, Nancy!