The Kindle is a fantastic supplement to a reader's sagging and overfull bookshelf, and the market is absolutely primed—both e-books and electronic readers—to continue a path of explosive growth. As an aspiring writer, I do, of course, want my work to line the many shelves of a brick-and-mortar bookstore, but the reality of our industry hints that being on Amazon just might end up being the far more advantageous position.

But I'm not here to discuss the future of the e-book. I want to showcase how the Kindle has become, for me, a wonderful tool in the writing process. Most notably, that moment of first diving into a recently-finished draft of, well, most any kind of project—a novel, short stories, or even posts like this. The fear, and hesitant excitement, of dealing with the raw output, as terrible as it might be. Churning it around in my head and breaking it into something better. When dealing with this initial work, it's easy to get caught up in low-level revision—that is, grammar and poor word choice and despicable flow.

The most important part of that initial revision, however, certainly is not the sentence-level oddities. This is particularly true for a novel. One needs to first tackle the high-order issues, such as uneven pacing, the lack of a complex and dynamic conflict, poor characterization, and so on, if they want any further drafts to be successful at all. Spending hours on the minutia of any given scene might turn out to be a waste as you later cut the whole affair further down the road. In order to get a handle on what high-order issues your novel needs addressing most, most recommend printing off the manuscript and sitting down—sans pen, perhaps, to prevent wasting time with line edits—to read your work like you would any other novel. When you finish, you should have a grasp on what areas aren't working, and what you need to do next. This isn't ideal, for a few reasons:

• It's a massive waste of paper. My current novel in revision tops out at almost 300 pages, and that's just 90,000-ish words. Many write much longer pieces than that.
• It's not mobile. I do my writing from any number of places: home, coffee shops, work (shh!), and a few others. I don't want to carry around a ream of paper wherever I go. And it's especially obvious at the office.
• That blank paper invites line edits. I used to read printed manuscripts with a pen not in hand by nearby, with the intention of taking notes at the end of each scene. But after a hundred words, I would reach for the pen, just to make a one obvious change, and another hundred words (and fifteen minute) later, the page would be filled with edits.

So what's my Kindle-based method? My zero drafts are always in a plain text (.txt) format , so I just send the document straight to my Kindle at [username]@free.kindle.com. The file downloads over Wi-Fi a minute later. I don't worry about formatting—who cares if the font changes from time to time, or if there's an extra line break? I sit down on the couch, at the coffee shop—or wherever else I've chosen (because the Kindle is significantly smaller and more lightweight than that ream of paper)—and breeze through the zero-draft like it's any other e-book.

I take notes as I go, marking passages that need to be cut, or expanded upon, and every 20 percent of the reading, I step back and make some very high-order judgments on the progression of the novel. Is the conflict sufficiently explained? Are the characters developing in a natural and believable way? And so on. This way, I have a scene-by-scene breakdown of necessary changes, along with the more sweeping narrative issues that need to be sorted out.

The most important element to this technique is the disconnect between pen and manuscript. Every 30 seconds or so, I see a glaring, embarrassing error. My favorite was replacing the innocent “bowl” with “bowel.” These mistakes happen, but they’re nothing to worry about, not until significantly further in revision. The Kindle creates an abstract barrier that frowns upon any line edits, however pathetically amateur. Of course, one could always create an annotation, but the process is tedious, and then you need to keep the Kindle around during the whole revision process, scanning for fixes you’ve already identified. Better to just wait, and fix them later. If you're lazy, that's what a copy editor is for.

In the actual revision process, I simply use my high-order notes to make the changes I deem necessary. Because it’s such an early draft, there really isn’t a need for a marked-up manuscript when you’re cutting whole characters, building up side narratives, or wildly moving scenes around, as I'm doing right now. I try to start with those broad issues—right now, I'm adding a few scenes to build up the significance of a certain character's arc—and on occasion, I dip into a scene and fix the slightly more local issues there, such as smoothing up poor dialogue, or axing a passage that is no longer relevant to the novel-to-be.

This technique, as does any, comes with a few caveats.

• My notes aren’t as mobile as I’d like them to be either. I use my writing notebook alongside my Kindle, an average-sized Moleskin. It’s significantly more mobile than a whole manuscript, but if I’m packing minimally, cramming all that leather-bound ink into an already-full bag can be annoying, especially if I know I won’t put any more words down on that paper.

• Some errors really are that bad. Sometimes, you write in a story-stopping error. The kind that would serve to throw off everything you’ve been building up. It could be the way you phrased a certain line. Or perhaps you’ve forgotten some important detail about your protagonist, and suddenly it’s changed to the opposite. Blonde to brunette is one thing, but male to female? (And, yes, I've done that with minor characters.) That's a code red if there ever was one. With my technique, there isn’t a good way to immediately make this change, if only to put your mind at ease, unless you rip open the file on your computer and have at it.

• You need a Kindle. Duh. Some people just aren’t ready to buy a Kindle. Perhaps it’s too expensive. Perhaps they don't want to buy in to the digital book world. That's fine. But they've gotten so, so cheap over the years.

In the end, revision—as is writing—is a extremely personal task. No one technique works for anyone. I do think, however, that I’ll continue to use the Kindle for most of my initial revision work, even with short stories. Simply put, I enjoy reading on the Kindle, and I'd like to do more of it.