Writing Hacker Tip #2: Double Duty Reading

I love doing things efficiently, and I’m always looking for new ways to do more work in less time or at least do double duty with one task. I’m sharing some of my crazy writing hacker tips, and I hope you will share some with me too.

Double Duty Reading (a.k.a. Killing Two Birds With One Stone)

One of the things I love about being a children’s writer is that it’s required to read children’s books. Same goes for being an elementary school teacher. And a parent. I’m lucky enough to be all three. So it’s no wonder I pretty much ONLY read children’s books. An occasional adult novel will sneak it, but it has to come highly recommended.

Last week I talked about market research and reading professional magazines and how I keep up with that. But there is another side to market research—knowing the market and what’s being published.

So, I try to expose my kids at home and my students at school to the latest and greatest children’s books. I try to read books so I can recommend them to my students. But all of this day job work and parenting work is also doing something else—feeding my writing work.

Have no time for market research? Read the books to your kids that you want to study yourself. Lately, my son’s bedtime stories have been interesting point of view picture books and concrete poetry picture books. He’s pretty happy and I’m learning something about craft.