Writers have an enormous amount of reading to do. Keeping up on what's being written in our genres. Material on process. Material on marketing. We need to be researching publications that could end up being markets for our short writing. We need to research agents and editors for submission.And then, of course, there are all the bright, shiny things we just have to have at the library, at bookstores, at used book sales, and or our e-readers. Oh, how I love to binge read eBooks. Just bought another one in an adult mystery series a few hours ago.
Well, how to find time to do all this reading? Because, you know, we're supposed to be writing sometime, too.
Last week I stumbled upon 13 Tips for Getting More Reading Done at Gretchen Rubin's website. (I found this on Twitter, actually.) Lots of good ideas here. My favorites:
1. Quit Reading. Unless you feel you need to read something for work, just quit what's not working for you. Then move on to something else. If you really have to read something you don't care for, see 4 below.
3. Watch Recorded TV. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know we should all be giving up TV so we can read all evening next to the oil lantern. Let's be honest. That's not going to happen. Recording television means you're not a slave to the TV schedule. You can watch TV around reading instead of reading around watching TV.
4. Skim. This is particularly useful with books that fall into the first category above. You feel you need to read the last bloated volume of a well-known series, but you're afraid you're going to die of old age before you finish it. Skim it. If you're not being paid to write a professional review, you don't need to read every word or even most of the words. What you want is to learn the book's significance and how it relates to other books like it. Skimming will let you do that.
7. Always Have Something To Read. Come on. That goes without saying.
10. Set Aside Time To Read Taxing Books. I love this idea. I'm going to try to do it. I just don't know when.
I'm a big fan of audio books. I get so much more reading done now that I can listen to stories on my way back and forth to work.
ReplyDeleteI have used them on long trips, especially for books I wanted to know about but wasn't particularly looking forward to reading. I got my husband interested in YA with audio books.
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