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Personal productivity is important to a writing career. A writer's raw materials consist of craft, imagination and time. Time, unfortunately, is the one element in the equation that is constant. We can't beg, borrow or steal more time. We can only work with what God gave us-twenty-four hours seven times a week.
Becoming attuned to your writing biorhythms, however, can pay big dividends in personal productivity.
Do you know what time of day is best for drafting new material? In my case-it's early morning. Over the years, I've become an early riser. I'm fresh, my head is uncluttered with the minutiae of daily life, the phone doesn't ring and I can write in the "passion hot" mode. Three to four hours in this state and I've generated a lot of new material. (There's an old adage that writers work on one side of midnight or the other. Younger writers, in particular, often find nighttime their most productive period.)
For me, afternoons are best suited to editing and revising, researching, dealing with business matters and tasks like e-mail and correspondence.
If my week is devoted to a lot of corporate work, I still rise early on Saturday and Sunday and use that time to draft scenes of plays and screenplays-my personal writing.
If you make a conscious effort to learn your writing biorhythms and arrange your schedule accordingly, it can bring a regularity and productivity to your writing that allows you to make the most of your craft and imagination.
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