My favorite piece of writing advice is: recycle. No, I am not talking about reusing paper, but about recycling writings. As I have a day job that involves quite a bit of writing, I look for ways to reuse my work.

I often write educational articles for our school newsletter. This is a great starting point for me. I took one article about learning to read and shortened it, tweaked it for teachers, added some art ideas, and sent it in to a company that sells art supplies. They were looking for articles for their marketing newsletter and my article fit the bill. It left me $100 richer, with little effort involved.

Recently, I got an acceptance email from a professional early childhood publication. Again, I sent in one of my educational articles from work, and then worked with them to tailor it for their publication. This leaves me with an even greater feeling of accomplishment as it has been my goal for a long time to be published in a professional magazine.

In addition, I recently queried another one of my articles to Discount School Supply – a company that sells childrenís toys. They pay $50 for a blog post.

In a reverse situation, a co-worker asked me for a poem of appreciation for staff members. I took a poem I wrote for a freelance client, who ended up with a letter instead of the poem. When a colleague needed my help, I had this ready to roll.

What is in your repertoire that you can recycle? Help our environment by keeping good writing in the market. Recycling is good for you!

Kaila Weingarten, M.S., is an avid reader and writer and a big proponent of high quality, early childhood education.