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ashelterofpagesSo, one of the things I really, really like hearing about is how people keep track of things/how they organize themselves. (Hearing people talk about how they use spreadsheets gives me the good brain tingles. XD) The other day, I asked jennet about the things she tracks in regards to her writing/reading, and then wearing_tearing asked me about mine.
I was going to answer them in a comment, but I thought it might be fun to talk about the whole mess of it.
So, I'm going to start with reading because that's much shorter than writing.
Basically, I primarily read short stories. Like, to the point where I read a single digit amount of anything longer than 10k. Part of this is because it's the length I write in but part of it is that I just really enjoy reading shorter things. I also pivoted a lot when as my vision got worse and worse. Even when I started doing primarily audio reading, I read much more short fiction than long.
Anyway, so what I wind up doing with this is that I have a tab stack where I pull up things and store them. I do a new stack each month. Literally anything fictional I want to read goes in that stack. As I read them, I save them to a bookmarks folder that's labeled with the year and the month that's then filed under 'Monthly Read Archive'. I'll do the same thing with the stories I don't get to either and put them into 'Monthly Unread Archive'. I like having them saved so I can go back through the year and pick stuff out when nothing I have pulled up is grabbing my attention.
When it comes to stories I really enjoy and might want to read again, I have a file where I save the story title, author, where I read it, and a link to the story. I then also write a little off-the-cuff review for it and save all that. Not only do I do this for my own reference, but I use all this for when I'm writing the newsletter I mentioned a few posts back.
I want to find a way to do some better archiving for stories I maybe read and liked, but don't feel like I want to shout about. With the bookmarks folder, I save *everything* I want to read, but it'd be cool to have a way to glance through just the things I really liked, but maybe didn't love or have things to say about it.
My writing stuff is a little more involved.
Things to know:
- I (at this point) exclusively write original fiction. I cut my teeth in fanfic and love it, but I fell out of writing it years ago. (I do, however, have the 3SF pulled up, so who knows what might happen. >.>)
- I write short fiction for submission (most of the time).
- I use multiple spreadsheets but you could probably knock these down to a single one if you're building your own. I, however, am not that talented.
- You can also probably use spreadsheets for *everything* I track, but I don't quite get there.
So, okay, with all that in mind, here we go.
I'll start with the part that's not in a spreadsheet. What that winds up being is maintaining a list of submission calls that are coming up through the year. This is a living document so I'm updating it when I run into interesting things, and clearing out things if I miss the deadline, decide I'm not going to actually submit, or did manage to get a story in.
I have a section for each month of the year, as well as a section for things that are opening for multiple months. If a venue opens multiple times a year, each opening gets its own entry.
In every entry I include:
- Opening and closing dates.
- A link to the submission itself with a title that mentions the venue itself
- The general theme/vibe that they're looking for
- Wordcount.
- Sometimes I include payrate but I don't do this all the time because it's not always important to me.
If something has multiple categories, I'll make a new entry for each one. So, one for fiction, one for poetry for example.
If I have an idea for a story that might work, or one I want to try and get into shape, I note down that story in a bullet point. If there are multiple possibilities, I put them all down.
So, that's part of it.
Everything else lives in spreadsheets.
Speaking of, I have:
- The new draft wordcount spreadsheet is what it says on the tin.
- The edited draft wordcount spreadsheet is also what it says on the tin. I like having these two counts separate because they're different kinds of mindsets, and 100 fresh words is very different feeling than 100 edited words.
- My GYWO habit tracker.
- The story notes tracking sheet is it's own thing.
In this one I have a few sections. First is the date, then the designation/title, the word count (and I mark if I did edits or new words), my overall mood as I was writing/how I felt when I finished, the things that went well/easily for me, the things that I struggled more with, and finally just a section for random notes. I use these for whatever I feel like. Being excited, talking about what I'm going to do next with it, random commentary about my characters being ridiculous. Anything goes for the notes section.
Each month gets a new page in the overall spreadsheet until I get through the whole year, then I make a whole new one.
And finally, I just have the "Full Story Tracking" collection. One day I'll name this something better or...something. It's not a great label for it, but I know what's in it, so I guess that's what matters most.
This one has a few separate sheets inside it.
- The stories themselves.:
This one holds all the stories I've written. WIPs, finished, published, or still submitting. On this sheet I have sections for story title, wordcount, whether it's finished or not, how many times it's been rejected, where it's been accepted, how much I got paid for it, and some kind of link to it. In the section where I mark down the number of rejections, I make a comment and list out exactly where those have come from so I'm sure I don't resubmit, or if I do, it's been several years and I know the story is significantly different than the last time they saw it.
- Yearly Submissions.
Each year I make a new sheet for noting down the actual story submissions. Here, I write down the story being submitted, the venue it's at, the day it got submitted, the day I heard back, and whether it was accepted or rejected. Something I keep meaning to add into this section is if the story can be submitted to multiple places at once (some venues want to be the only place looking at the story), but I keep forgetting to do that.
- And this last sheet is just my yearly stats
Each year has a row to itself and the columns are year, total submissions made, new submission stories written, new poems written (this is more hoping for the future than anything), new for-fun stories written (I try and have a healthy mix of Serious Writing and silly things that might involve characters in my RP or something), the total number of rejections, the total number of acceptances, the total number of hold notices, and finally, the total number of personal rejections.
So yeah, that's all of it I think. Are there more elegant ways of tracking all this? Oh, I have zero doubt. One day I might even let myself take out the two wordcount spreadsheets and just use my GYWO one and mark in there whether the words are new words or edited ones. Yet, this is how I've managed to scrape things together. It works well enough for me, and I guess that's what matters, right?
jennet about the things she tracks in regards to her writing/reading, and then wearing_tearing asked me about mine.I was going to answer them in a comment, but I thought it might be fun to talk about the whole mess of it.
So, I'm going to start with reading because that's much shorter than writing.
This feels brief and yet somehow overly complicated.
Basically, I primarily read short stories. Like, to the point where I read a single digit amount of anything longer than 10k. Part of this is because it's the length I write in but part of it is that I just really enjoy reading shorter things. I also pivoted a lot when as my vision got worse and worse. Even when I started doing primarily audio reading, I read much more short fiction than long.
Anyway, so what I wind up doing with this is that I have a tab stack where I pull up things and store them. I do a new stack each month. Literally anything fictional I want to read goes in that stack. As I read them, I save them to a bookmarks folder that's labeled with the year and the month that's then filed under 'Monthly Read Archive'. I'll do the same thing with the stories I don't get to either and put them into 'Monthly Unread Archive'. I like having them saved so I can go back through the year and pick stuff out when nothing I have pulled up is grabbing my attention.
When it comes to stories I really enjoy and might want to read again, I have a file where I save the story title, author, where I read it, and a link to the story. I then also write a little off-the-cuff review for it and save all that. Not only do I do this for my own reference, but I use all this for when I'm writing the newsletter I mentioned a few posts back.
I want to find a way to do some better archiving for stories I maybe read and liked, but don't feel like I want to shout about. With the bookmarks folder, I save *everything* I want to read, but it'd be cool to have a way to glance through just the things I really liked, but maybe didn't love or have things to say about it.
My writing stuff is a little more involved.
God, this is so much longer.
Things to know:
- I (at this point) exclusively write original fiction. I cut my teeth in fanfic and love it, but I fell out of writing it years ago. (I do, however, have the 3SF pulled up, so who knows what might happen. >.>)
- I write short fiction for submission (most of the time).
- I use multiple spreadsheets but you could probably knock these down to a single one if you're building your own. I, however, am not that talented.
- You can also probably use spreadsheets for *everything* I track, but I don't quite get there.
So, okay, with all that in mind, here we go.
I'll start with the part that's not in a spreadsheet. What that winds up being is maintaining a list of submission calls that are coming up through the year. This is a living document so I'm updating it when I run into interesting things, and clearing out things if I miss the deadline, decide I'm not going to actually submit, or did manage to get a story in.
I have a section for each month of the year, as well as a section for things that are opening for multiple months. If a venue opens multiple times a year, each opening gets its own entry.
In every entry I include:
- Opening and closing dates.
- A link to the submission itself with a title that mentions the venue itself
- The general theme/vibe that they're looking for
- Wordcount.
- Sometimes I include payrate but I don't do this all the time because it's not always important to me.
If something has multiple categories, I'll make a new entry for each one. So, one for fiction, one for poetry for example.
If I have an idea for a story that might work, or one I want to try and get into shape, I note down that story in a bullet point. If there are multiple possibilities, I put them all down.
So, that's part of it.
Everything else lives in spreadsheets.
Speaking of, I have:
- The new draft wordcount spreadsheet is what it says on the tin.
- The edited draft wordcount spreadsheet is also what it says on the tin. I like having these two counts separate because they're different kinds of mindsets, and 100 fresh words is very different feeling than 100 edited words.
- My GYWO habit tracker.
- The story notes tracking sheet is it's own thing.
In this one I have a few sections. First is the date, then the designation/title, the word count (and I mark if I did edits or new words), my overall mood as I was writing/how I felt when I finished, the things that went well/easily for me, the things that I struggled more with, and finally just a section for random notes. I use these for whatever I feel like. Being excited, talking about what I'm going to do next with it, random commentary about my characters being ridiculous. Anything goes for the notes section.
Each month gets a new page in the overall spreadsheet until I get through the whole year, then I make a whole new one.
And finally, I just have the "Full Story Tracking" collection. One day I'll name this something better or...something. It's not a great label for it, but I know what's in it, so I guess that's what matters most.
This one has a few separate sheets inside it.
- The stories themselves.:
This one holds all the stories I've written. WIPs, finished, published, or still submitting. On this sheet I have sections for story title, wordcount, whether it's finished or not, how many times it's been rejected, where it's been accepted, how much I got paid for it, and some kind of link to it. In the section where I mark down the number of rejections, I make a comment and list out exactly where those have come from so I'm sure I don't resubmit, or if I do, it's been several years and I know the story is significantly different than the last time they saw it.
- Yearly Submissions.
Each year I make a new sheet for noting down the actual story submissions. Here, I write down the story being submitted, the venue it's at, the day it got submitted, the day I heard back, and whether it was accepted or rejected. Something I keep meaning to add into this section is if the story can be submitted to multiple places at once (some venues want to be the only place looking at the story), but I keep forgetting to do that.
- And this last sheet is just my yearly stats
Each year has a row to itself and the columns are year, total submissions made, new submission stories written, new poems written (this is more hoping for the future than anything), new for-fun stories written (I try and have a healthy mix of Serious Writing and silly things that might involve characters in my RP or something), the total number of rejections, the total number of acceptances, the total number of hold notices, and finally, the total number of personal rejections.
So yeah, that's all of it I think. Are there more elegant ways of tracking all this? Oh, I have zero doubt. One day I might even let myself take out the two wordcount spreadsheets and just use my GYWO one and mark in there whether the words are new words or edited ones. Yet, this is how I've managed to scrape things together. It works well enough for me, and I guess that's what matters, right?
